A few miles off the M4 corridor is the lovely little town of Winterbourne. An upscale town on the outskirts of Bristol, in the district of South Gloucestershire. It is green, quaint, and peaceful. It is a normal British town, excepting that the sun will, on some winter days, still show her bright, orange face to the predominately pale, pink inhabitants.
There, a small, frail lady in a retirement home, is pulling a previously frozen microwave dinner out of her microwave. Her adult son is in the next room.
He says to her, "Mum, Dos things'll kill ya. Der's no nutrition in 'em." He is smoking a cigarette as he says this.
She smiles to herself, sets the hot dish aside to cool, and puts one in the microwave for him.
"Dear..." She says, as noble as the queen herself, "I've survived much worse than this."
"But Mum, you'uv all people should know 'bout right eatin'."
He's right, he thinks to himself. She barely survived scurvy in the waining days of the last World War. She's old, pale, frail, and not long for this world. She insists that she survived by the grace of the Lord, though her son is sure that the Americans and their shipments of rations after the war had something to do with it. He worries about her, especially now.
She brushes off his concern with a hand gesture, like she's shooing a fly. "I'm fine, dear, now, you said you had found more work, then?"
He runs his thick hands through his curly reddish-blond hair. "Yes'um" is his answer. His short, formal reply does not satisfy, and her face reflects this.
He sighs. "'Tis up north-ways. Its back'un Scotland."
His mother scowls. "I'll be back teh visit'ya on holidays." He says this, pleading in his eyes, but he knows he's lying. He intends to never see her again. Perhaps he can protect her this way. She's the only family he has. He has a bad feeling she's part of this, too.
"It's not at that same damned quarry near Edinburgh, is it?" She says with the worried look of a disappointed mother.
"Aye, 'tis." He's lying again. He can never show his face there again, not after what happened. He'll go to the states, and he'll talk to the one woman who he hopes can save him. His research over the last week suggested that there is hope, that a learned druid in Michigan had overcome a curse herself. But time is of the essence, he should still have a week or so.
His mother, sternly says "but you hate it up there."
"Aye, again, Mum. 'tis work, though. An' they given me a raise!"
She scowls again, but this is also because the Scot accent reminds her of his father. "Well, I should hope so! That quarry is nothing but trouble, I assure you. You looked terrible when you came back from there last week. Like death himself. Why would you subject yourself to such suffering? For money?!?"
"Aye. I'm leavin' tomorrah" He says quietly, staring at the floor. So long as she buys it, it's OK. It's for her own safety, after all.
They sit in silence for a moment, her staring at the wall, him staring at the floor. And then, the beeping of the microwave can be heard in the kitchen. She goes to get up, but he stops her.
"I'll get 'er, Mum. You stay put."
As he walks into the kitchen, a thunderous boom echoes from the north. The rafters of the little kitchenette creak, and he can hear the dishes rattling in their cupboards. Out the window, he sees a bright orange flash from the corner of his eye. His mother obviously didn't hear it. He runs to the window just in time to see a column of smoke and bright orange flame careen through the grey-blue sky.
His first response is excitement. He decides to pull his phone out and record the event, maybe he'll make the news. But as he watches, before his hand reaches his pocket to pull out the phone, he remembers his fear, and begins to take notice of the path the object is taking through the sky. Almost curving towards him, it seems. Like it's being drawn by a magnet, slowing up, billowing and belching light and smoke.
It's much closer now, near where the jetliners fly. There's another bright flash, followed by a second, much louder and more terrifying boom. The windows rattle and bow, as though made of thin, transparent metal.
He hears his sweet mother's last words: "What on God's green earth?"
Then he hears the words that haunt him, that have terrorized his dreams, that have been on his mind since he left the camp.
He hears it in the deep, booming, otherworldly voice that he originally had heard it, though the man who spoke it had a nasal voice and a thick accent.
He hears the words in English, but they aren't in English. They are in a strange language Stephen has never heard before, but somehow understands. He knows now what it is. The Curse...
"Kentu Ba'al-alenda, Kentu Denoch, Kentu Alva. Rerok Harva. Rerok Despa. Rerok Morthen. Donnu-al Despa Harva Warra Pyren Angon. Pellu Stephen Warren McAlerod. Pellu Kinrecht. Kentu Alva. Prex Alva"
There are hisses and gurgles and crackling noises in the pronunciation of the words. Some of the words don't sound like words at all, and they are words; Stephen understands them as words, but they are also feelings, hunches, visions, complicated emotions cutting deep into his psyche. "Kentu Ba'al-alenda" sounds like cold wind whipping through an dark, empty graveyard, like water gurgling through a sterile cave deep under the earth that has never felt the touch of light or life. "Kentu Denoch" sounds like a newborn child's thick, wet, labored, dying breath and like the mother's impotent, almost silent, desperate whine in answer. "Kentu Alva" sounds like the hot, sinister crackle of lightning before the boom of the thunder, like a predator hungrily crunching the skull of it's prey in it's mouth, heard from the perspective of the prey.
"Prex Alva", or rather the horrid, driving, grating, crunching sound "Prex Alva" makes when spoken aloud, echoes through Stephen's mind, as though chanted by a million souls from the pits of hell, the sound bouncing off the flaming, cavernous walls of Hades. All he hears now is the chanting, over and over again. He can almost feel the teeth of some monstrous creature digging into his temples and slowly feeling his skull give way, a bit at a time, under the pressure. He can almost feel it drooling on him, as sweat drips down his forehead.
Above him, the flame and smoke finally resolve into a shape. His feet feel like they are glued to the floor. His hands are numb.
The last vision that Stephen McAlerod has is of a large, flaming metallic superstructure, with CCCP written on the side in bold, red letters.
He feels his stomach rumble. His mind is an empty hall that should have held the accomplishments of his life. But there is nothing. He tries to think of old girlfriends, the taste of a cold beer, childhood memories. Nothing comes to him; Just a cold, empty feeling, all over.
Then, searing heat, then pain all over, and terrible noise.
All goes black. He feels his heart stop beating. He realizes he isn't breathing.
Then, nothing.
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