'Daughter'. When it ran through John's mind, even the word seemed more awkward, more ... complicated.
"Are you disappointed?" Asked Lisandra.
"No," said John, realizing, in fact, that he wasn't, that it didn't matter. In fact, that made the love for the child even greater. She would need his protection more than a boy - and that he knew how to give. Besides, I had no idea how to father a girl. Just as I had no idea how to be a warrior. Perhaps it would be an even greater ordeal, John suspected, but he would succeed. I would learn. For now, just being there with her, holding her close to him, was enough.
I'm a father.
I have a daughter.
Yes, it was more than enough.
John's house was on the outskirts of a small, close-knit village, and word of his safe return spread quickly. When he arrived there to set up his house, many villagers were suspicious of him; they knew something about his bloody past, despite John's efforts to never talk about it. However, in time, everyone knew what a good neighbor was like, a good friend, and a man that many found it difficult to believe that he had raised his hand to someone in fury. It was where he met and fell in love with Lisandra.
They had been married for a month, and although the date had fallen at the height of the harvest, not a single hand worked in the fields that day; everyone was present.
And together they came again. The town square was bathed in torchlight when the sunset turned to a moonlit night and John's friends and neighbors gathered to welcome them and congratulate him on his recent fatherhood. Those who knew how to play an instrument were quickly brought together to have music and dance; food and wine were offered in abundance; and, after a conversation with Arnaldo, the village baker, John ensured that there were many black honey buns.
He danced with the woman into the night, fully sipping the music, the laughter and the love around him. Such were the depths of the melancholy felt for long days and nights hunting Dexter that, suddenly, being happy again was dizzying, It was such an intense and overwhelming sensation that he almost felt guilty. 'Did you really deserve to be so happy? What had he done to deserve a good fortune like that? A lovely woman, so many good friends, such a beautiful child? ' Somehow it felt wrong to be rewarded for a life of bloodshed with that ...
'Not'. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind. He would not allow himself to spoil that moment. He had never liked the massacres, like many others he knew. He did this only because it was necessary to protect his homeland, and he will not ask for anything in return. Whatever the reward that fate sought to grant him, it should not be a reason for guilt. Finally he deserved it, the life he had dreamed of. And I wouldn't give up on her. The promise he had made to Lisandra had also made to himself: enough of blood, of war, enough of serving the king. If Joshua's messengers summoned him again, they would return only with a message of polite but firm refusal. That was his life now, until the end of his days. Home. Family. Peace.
John did not touch the wine, as he wanted to remember that night clearly, but he still felt drunk and dizzy when the festivities started to cool down, and Lisandra took him back to the cabin. He was sure that, for the first time in many weeks, a good night's sleep was about to happen, but he was wrong. In the darkness of the room, Lisandra pressed him against the wall, and her warm breath was close to his chest when she opened his shirt and slid his hands underneath. John flinched when the woman's fingertips played over his chest and found the rough patch of scarred skin where Dexter had burned the scarab pendant.
Lisandra knew each of John's battle scars but that was new. History, however, could wait; for now she simply thanked that her man was back without al. an injury worse than that.
"I will be careful," she said.
"What's that for now?" Said John before kissing her with all the passion of their first night together. Lisandra's tongue danced with his as her hands slid down and unbuckled the man's belt.
"What if we wake the baby up?" Asked John as his heart beat even faster.
"I'll be disappointed if we don't wake up," she whispered in her husband's ear, and her hand slid into his pants, grabbing him.
An hour later, John and Lisandra were lying naked, tangled together, the heat cooling their bodies. But the restorative sleep that John had waited for so long, and that he was sure to be waiting for after so many sleepless nights hunting for Dexter, never came. Instead, it was plagued by the most intense, most visceral, most terrifying nightmare they have ever experienced in their entire existence. And John was no stranger to night terrors; many times, in the war, he woke up in the middle of the night, shaken by panic after the memory of some encounter spent in battle plagued him in the form of a horrible and bloody dream. But this, that was something more distressing, more vivid.
In the dream, one of Dexter's abominations was heading for John's village in the dead of night, when everyone was asleep. The vile creature went from house to house, slaughtering men, women and children in bed. A woman woke up and saw the creature tearing her husband apart. He turned to her then and tore her neck. The screams woke the villagers, who ran from the houses with torches and pitchforks to find the beast appearing in the pale moonlight, drooling and sticky with the blood of its first victims.
For a moment they stood, wide-eyed, petrified by the pure and unbelievable horror of the thing. Then they ran to attack it only to be brutally crushed when the beast found them head-on, trampling them, tearing them with teeth and claws in insane fury. It was unstoppable. Axes and pitchforks streaked his scaly, armored skin without causing any damage. The fire did nothing but enrage her even more.
When he finished destroying his attackers, the abomination continued to cross the village, hunting for others who had been awakened by panicked screams and cries for help, and who were now running for their lives, to no avail. The beast was too fast for them; knocked each one down, disemboweling and tearing where they fell while screaming and desperately trying to escape.
The horror of the nightmare became even greater, since John experienced it so clearly. Every nauseating moment, every moment of terror happened with greater clarity than any dream I had ever had before. Everything except for the beast itself. John, too close to see her complete form, had only glimpses as she writhed, struggled and murdered. Tweezers. A claw. Six oily legs that moved forward, * click-click-click *, while the invisible thing ran from one victim to the next. And always the terrible, high-pitched scream I made every time I killed. In other nightmares, John had always been able to wake up alone, escape the horror and return to the real world, telling himself it was just a dream, it was not true. Not this time. As much as he tried, John was unable to end the nightmare. He was trapped inside him, helpless, unable to roll his eyes, as if they were wide open by an invisible torturer who forced him to witness every moment. And now the beast was moving away from the center of the village, passing through the smashed and crushed bodies that spread on the bloody ground, sneaking into the vicinity of the village, towards the home where he, his wife and their newborn daughter still slept. When the creature approached and John's terror deepened, he tried to focus, invoking every inch of his will to end that torment. 'Wake up wake up wake up…'
He woke up. He felt a great sense of relief when he finally realized that he had escaped the iron prison of the dream. But that relief soon gave way to a disgusting sense of unease that hung over him, though the nightmare was over - an oppressive, almost suffocating feeling of terror. He rubbed his eyes, then raised his hand to the side of his head with a grunt. His head throbbed with a hollow throbbing, as if he had woken from a night of drinking, but John did not touch a drop. The dream had been so powerful, it seemed, so traumatic, that it left behind some residual phantom pain.
More than anything, more than ever, John needed to be close to Lisandra, to feel her comforting warmth against him. He turned to touch her in the dark. But she was not there. John's hand, searching blindly for the woman, found only a handful of straw. He sat down, and when the vision began to adjust in the dark, he saw that he was naked on a bed of straw. The whole place stank of manure, sulfur and burnt hay.
It was in a horse barn, on a tall pile of ashes, which, for some reason, were scattered over the hay. Apparently, he will sleep huddled in the center of that rubble nest. It was ash that stank of sulfur, and a thin layer of it covered John from head to toe, staining the skin with the color of charcoal. When he tried to clean it, he succeeded only by rubbing it harder. And when he did, he realized there was something wrong. His wedding ring was not there. He hadn't taken it once in the year he was married, but inexplicably she was gone.
A single beam of daylight passed through a crack in the barn door. Naked, John stood up slowly, shouting when he did. It was not just the head of the day after any battle that had ever been fought. Inclined by the pain, John staggered to the barn door and opened it wide, narrowing his eyes and raising his hand to protect him from the sunlight from outside. Erratic, he took a step forward, into the shadow of a protruding tree, and then saw them.
Just like in the nightmare.
The bodies of murdered villagers lay around him. Some covered in blood and gutted, limbs broken and turned in strange, recursive positions.
Some open from the throat to the belly, the entrails scattered on the floor. Others, little more than raw meat, trampled on the ground, or in pieces, scattered everywhere. The whole village, butchered. John stumbled back to the barn. The mind spun. I was still in the dream; Did it seem like he had woken up just a cruel trick to prolong his torment? No, the maddening, frantic sensation that will define the dream, that desperate paralysis he felt when he finished was over. He could move freely, take his eyes off the horror before him, if he wanted to.
But it didn't. Strengthening himself, regaining his control as best he could, John walked among the dead, absorbing every detail. A stunning realization began to take shape; the body of each friend, each neighbor, lay exactly as it had fallen in his dream. There was Leland, John's closest neighbor and the first to come and shake his hand and welcome him the day before.
He was facedown on the ground, a pale, frozen ghost, his body swollen, his entrails scattered on the ground beneath him, sneezed just as the beast in the nightmare had gutted him with his demonic claw. Not far away was Arnaldo, the baker who will take rolls home for the celebration and who, in his dream, had been among the first to attack the creature. She rushed over him and the others at her side with an uproar of rotating claws, sharp as a scythe, and stung everyone, limb by limb. John looked at the man's severed head, his eyes wide and staring at the sky, lifeless, a dismal mask preserving the terror he had taken at the time of death.
Just like in the nightmare.
John was in the midst of the carnage, recognizing every horrid detail, and came to the inconceivable, if inescapable, conclusion: the visions of the nightmare that had plagued him in his sleep were not dreams. 'What was it about, then? Some form of premonition? But for what purpose, if he had arrived too late to prevent it from becoming a reality? What did you do ... '
'Lisandra. The baby.' John turned towards the cabin on the outskirts of the city and ran. Every bone and muscle complained, because his body still hurt from head to toe, but he didn't slow down. The dream - or whatever it might have been - ended before any of them gave strength to them, right? As far as I could remember, yes, more in the same way as a dream, the memory is warning it was getting foggy, specific details and moments became increasingly difficult to remember, until only the horrible, unsettling feeling with which John had awakened .
Her hut was the furthest from the center of the village-perhaps the creature had passed through it when it left, perhaps it had satiated with the massacre of so many others. But maybe not. Please let them be alive, please. Those were the thoughts that were still running through John's mind when he opened the cabin door. It was as if the entire hut had been painted red ... what remains of Lisandra was strewn across the walls and spilled on the floor, the residue of violence beyond imagination. Even the ceiling dripped. An ear, a finger, a ruffled and tousled tuft of blood-streaked blond hair were the only identifiable parts of it that were left. The barbarism to do something like this was beyond what John will ever come, even for the most insane and savage of the Nordic Berserk.
Brutality like that was beyond any man's ability. On the other hand, no man could do that. If he had been a man in the past, he had been deformed into something horrible and unrecognizable by Dexter's rotten magic. In the corner was her daughter's crib, her dark wicker with Lisandra's blood.
Defeated and beaten, John staggered to him, hoping that the little girl had somehow been spared. But it shouldn't have been. Inside, where Beatrice slept, there was a lot of flesh, blood and bones, until there was nothing more to recognize. Even the mere glimpse was more than John could handle. He hurried out, stumbling, into the sunlight, and fell to the floor, unable to breathe.
As he struggled to catch his breath, he looked up and saw that not even Carpeado will survive. The mare's body lay where John wanted to make a comfortable stable for his faithful companion, next to the grain store, without his head and with his stomach open. Finally, John's horror, confusion and disbelief gave way to the despair that hit him in an absolute wave.
He cried out in agony the tears began to flow, and he fell into excruciating sobs, so strong that his entire body convulsed. For many hours he cried, until he couldn't get any more. Then he was in silent despair, for anyone who watched him, he was a hollow shell, with no shadow of humanity.
Inside, the mind was racing, trying desperately to understand the truth of what had happened there. 'Where were you when all this happened? Why the cries of the other villagers did not wake him up. And why did you wake up so far from where you had fallen asleep - right in a barn? ' Even if I had the answer to all these questions, certainly none of them could explain the nightmare and its horrifying omen.
How could he ... It was then that John looked at the floor in front of his house, lost in thought, and found his ring. Only it was no longer an alliance. He lifted it and saw that the circle had been broken and bent roughly in a gold ribbon. When he turned it over in his hands, trying to figure out what could have taken it so destructively from his finger, he knew it suddenly. Immediately, instinctively, he knew.
It wasn't just a dream or a premonition.
Not a fantasy of any kind.
It had all been real.
Every detail of his terrifying vision was even more unsettling because of its unshakable sharpness, and yet the beast itself was the only thing that John had never fully seen. As if he had experienced everything through the eyes of the beast.
Because he was the beast!
... Or somehow it was. His form was human now, but his body, tortured by pain and reeking of sulfur, told him the truth. He realized that he felt as if something had burst inside him, shattered bone and ripped muscle and tendon to break free from the human cage. And somehow, he left, leaving only the "cage" redone. John's hand hovered over his chest, at the scarab-shaped burn that Dexter had left on him the day before.
The memory came to John at once - the look of fury, maleficent and canny, on the archbishop's face as he murmured that final spell, each unintelligible word plotted with hatred, and the evil smile even when John's blade dug deeper and life abandoned him. As if he knew it hadn't ended there; as if he knew he would still have his revenge. 'It was possible? Turn a man into a monster like the ones the archbishop had conjured so many times before - and then return him to human form? He was trying to expand his understanding and mastery of the magic he had learned, 'Harley had said after studying the writings of the deceased.
Develop it to a higher, more advanced level. How it could have been done was beyond his capacity, but John could not deny the destroyed and lacerated bodies around him, everything his tormented body told him, what his mind was screaming for.
That's what he did.
Not an unknown monster.
The monster was him.
That had been Dexter's revenge inside John for her to take over his body only after his return home, to his loved ones. Thus he would slaughter in insane fury only to be restored to his true form, the soul returned to him so that he could witness the complete horror of his crime. So he could be tortured by that sight for the rest of his days. So that Dexter, even from hellfire, could watch his anguish and laugh.
John was still lost in his daze, trying to understand the fullness of what he now knew to be true, when in the distance, beyond the hill, he heard the sound of horses approaching. He panicked.
What would it mean for him to be found there, like that? Would anyone believe your story? Would he be taken as the sole survivor or a lunatic killer? He did not know, nor did he care, such was the depth of his despair. But the little presence of mind he still had told him that this was not the time to let his destiny be decided by others. Hearing the sound of the horses approaching, he grabbed a cotton blanket and wrapped himself around it, then fled through the village into the dense forest not far away - and disappeared completely.
…..End?