The Whims of the Wicked

There it was. Finally. She had truly tracked it down. After a long and arduous trek in uncharted Amazonian jungle territory, blindly following her directions in the hostile environment, their lot could finally feast their eyes on the sight before them. The Aeducan. The fabled pirate ship itself; said to have plundered countless empires throughout the ages, pillaging with no discrimination the ancient Greeks, the Persian Empire, the Romans, the Huns, and even the Egyptians during Cleopatra’s era. It seemed impossible then, but traces of the Aeducan were to be found everywhere in local legends and old wives’ tales; it still seemed impossible now, despite the evidence before them.

The smile that stretched out Deiyosa’s lips was nothing short of predatorial, and Sam flinched when he noticed it. It was the first sign of emotion she had ever displayed since their first encounter, yet it sent cold shivers trickling down his spine. He knew she wasn’t normal in any sense of the term, but this was something else. It was entirely devoid of warmth, only presenting a depthless hunger.

She had found him nearly four weeks ago, and had begged him to play the part of her husband to let her come on this expedition. She was just a woman after all, and anyone with any sense knew better than to bring a woman on an adventure. When she had mentioned she knew the location of the Aeducan’s wreck and could bring them there, he had disbelieved her, written her off as crazy as any sane man would, but the golden Aztec coin she had pulled from her sleeve had been enough to convince him, along with the promise of many, many more from where it came from. That, and the unwavering gaze of unflinching certainty she had plunged into his eyes had decided him. He would lead the expedition as guide, and she would tell him the path to follow.

It took some convincing to get the planned expedition off its current trail in the Mediterranean Sea to head deep into the Amazonian jungle. After all, how could a ship wreck itself so far from the ocean? But the ancient coin played its part once more, followed by an equally ancient map Sam hadn’t been privy to. There was no point in simply stealing it, as it was made of images and patterns recognisable only if you knew what you were looking for once inside the jungle. The mark on the top left corner was, however, unmistakable as belonging to the Aeducan: a single red eye weeping a bloody tear.

And so, they were hired on, and the party organized itself quickly in order to leave in the following days. They’d never seen such a tangible, potent lead. Excitement and anticipation were in the air.

Sam stood rooted to the ground as others started celebrating around him and made their way to the wreckage. He barely heard Verdan’s muffled apology as he clipped him in his haste to start making camp near the disemboweled center of the ship. He couldn’t bear the feeling of deep unease that was building inside him, as he witnessed Deiyosa’s apparent exultation. Her golden eyes were fixed on the figurehead, the one thing across all the legends, fables and tales that had always remained the same, despite the vague and otherwise contradictory retellings. It was that of a beautiful woman with terrible, shining red eyes, clawing and tearing herself apart in evident agony, frozen in the middle of her screams. The stories all stated that those wounds veritably wept blood, which was impossible, of course. As impossible as a shipwreck in the middle of a jungle. Yet here they were.

But what got to Sam the most was how, despite her intense focus, no emotion showed itself in Deiyosa’s eyes. They looked very much dead. All of her thunderous elation, her savouring of her victory, that maddening energy she gave off of a starving man allowed into a veritable feast, all of it was contained within that smile. That stretched-out, stomach-curling, too-many-teeth-revealing smile. It was the only thing that seemed alive about her, Sam thought as he surveyed her otherwise petrified stance, transfixed as she was with the prow. He wasn’t certain she had even blinked since their discovery of the broken Aeducan, laying on its flank. His feeling of unease was rapidly morphing into unexplainable dread.

Deiyosa let out a quiet, drawn-out breath, as though she was slowly coming back to herself. She attempted a wobbly step forward, and Sam’s reflexes were the only thing that kept her from falling face first. She was shaking in his arms, and Sam momentarily forgot his misgivings, concerned for the dark beauty he was trying to keep upright. His skin crawled as she suddenly stopped shivering, and fear left his body heavy and cold as her head snapped up with impossible speed, her long locks spreading away from her features as her eyes dove into his. The unsettling contrast between her dead empty eyes and her wicked, wicked smile made him recoil internally. He desperately wished to be anywhere but there, holding this woman.

“Thank you,” she whispered roughly, slowly, with a deep voice which sounded old, and torn with disuse. A voice that contrasted greatly with the pleasant, pure tone she had always spoken with previously. Sam felt, more than he consciously understood, that she was not thanking him for stopping her fall.

Her nails suddenly sunk deep into the muscles of his shoulders with inconceivable strength, drawing blood. His voice died in his throat with a feeble squeak of absolute terror as a light deep within her eyes ignited in terrible flames, which promised death, torment and more agony than he could possibly comprehend; echoed by endless screams reverberating throughout his whole being.

“Two souls trading twenty…,” she rasped ecstatically, “Two hundred years a sentence reduced… Two thousand more to go… What other price than twenty thousand can be suitable to pay such debt? A just reward for such an exchange…”

Deiyosa suddenly released him and turned towards the men establishing camp, all of whom were oblivious to what had just happened. The moment her glacial, bony fingers released him, Sam felt his pockets grow increasingly heavy. It was altogether forgotten as he became witness to what followed.

Deiyosa marched into the beginnings of the camp, cackling madly as she went, reaching for each of the twenty men in turn as she passed them. They all seemed frozen in time until they turned to face her upon her reaching them, as though they had entered a collective trance. She brushed her fingertips to each of their foreheads, one by one, and a trail of smoky silver clung to her fingers each time they lifted from the skin, floating about behind her as she cleared her macabre path through the would-be explorers. The bodies merely crumpled in place; an expression of pure awe written on every face as her train of wisps grew longer and longer.

As the last man fell, Deiyosa made her way to the figurehead, not ten paces away from Sam’s petrified form. She paused before it, contemplating the tortured maiden crying her plea to invisible ears, cocking her head at an unnatural angle, as though laughing to herself.

“Sister…”

Sam barely heard her, though his stomach roiled as he witnessed the figureheads’ wounds burst into gushing fountains of blood, and a constant wailing emanated from her fixed, beautiful, wrecked features. Her arms outstretched slowly, revealing a gaping, oozing wound in the middle of her abdomen. Every single orifice was freely leaking blood now, in impossible torrents.

Deiyosa reached an arm up, flicked her wrist, and a little black book floated down from the newly revealed bloody alcove. It spun on itself and flipped open in a ruffle of ephemeral pages, all the way to the end. Trapped faces could be seen screaming within the pages, as though fighting to get free. It seemed as though the book were incomplete, that most of its pages were missing.

Open-mouthed, frozen in place, a warm trickle flowing down his leg, Sam’s horror was so great he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. He couldn’t comprehend what was happening. It simply couldn’t be. It was all too impossible.

Another flick of her wrist, and the train of smoky silver wisps behind Deiyosa floated up to the book, morphing into similar screaming pages before being bound into the black leather in turn, exhaling one last whisper as they flipped over for the next page to follow suit. Once the twentieth page was formed and bound, the book violently snapped shut and forcefully zipped back into its alcove. The figurehead cried in pain before resuming her original pose and concealed her gaping wound once more. The flow of blood from her claw marks, eyes, nostrils, and corners of her plump lips receded into a trickle, then stopped altogether; her wailing stopping as suddenly as it started. Silence returned, imposing and final, yet still charged and heavy.

Sam blinked, and Deiyosa now stood right before him, an amused, mad glimmer shining through her eyes. This time, his scream did not get stuck in his throat. It reverberated around for miles, accompanied only by screeching laughter in the otherwise deathly silent jungle.

He was still screaming when he woke up in his bed, tangled in the sheets, drenched in sweat, barely registering the faint scent of urine. He rose in a panicked jump and tumbled onto a mound of hard, flat pieces scattered across his floor. He stopped screaming, shakily picking up one of the ancient Aztec gold coins of the pile he had fallen onto. Without the shadow of a doubt, he knew there would be 20 000 pieces.