March-Stalkers Mighty: Prologue
“If it ain’t shaped human, it ain’t human. You got that, boy?”
Dean stared past Bobby’s legs and muffled his mouth with his hand, because big boys didn’t sob. The horrible thing shuddered and twitched into ghastly stillness on the leaf mold.
Strode then within the sovran thane
fearless in fight, of fame renowned,
hardy hero, Hrothgar to greet.
And next by the hair into the hall was borne
Grendel’s head, where the henchmen were drinking,
an awe to clan and queen alike,
a monster of marvel: the men looked on.
Beowulf, anonymous, manuscript c. 1000 (poem older), trans. Gunmere 1910. (XXIII)
The walls encircling their land were covered with paintings. Year after year of them, generations, going back no one knew how long. Whenever the bright colours of one section began to fade under the sun and the rain, another scene, another figure, would be painted over the top of it, lines and shadows blurring together into something wilder and stronger than either, something no painter had quite intended.
There were no humans painted on those walls. Instead there were... things. Creatures of thought and horror, maybe of far-away lands or very dark nights. Things like humans, but with two heads or four arms or none. People with only one leg, who hopped like bouncing balls. Things with their face set in the centre of their chest or back, things far too large to walk. Things with their heads and arms and legs elongated into grinning, spiderish contortions. Things covered with hair, or crawling on all fours, or with the heads and limbs of beasts, or all human except for something extra: tail, or horns, or claws, or ridges of stone jutting out along their spine.
The walls ran, neat and definite, along the boundaries of the land that everyone knew, the land that everyone understood. It was as old as memory, and it held back the dark: marked the edges of humanity.
Dean was six years old when he first met the boy.
He was down at the end of the farmlands, just inside the wall, where the apple trees and the pears gave way to old grey oaks, so tall and strong. Not many people came there, and Dean liked it because it was kind of gloomy and green, and the trees made dark places (but not too dark) where you could hide from your shadow and pretend you were a great monster hunter.
The boy didn’t look like a great monster hunter, or a heroic lancer of wild boar, or anything like that. He looked kind of scrawny and pale, but he had this big bright grin that always made Dean feel happy, and he had bluer eyes than anything Dean had ever seen before. He also had these soft black wings folded neatly down his back, which was a bit weird, but Dean had thought that all the hair growing out of old Master Jenkins’ nose was weird, and when he’d asked about that all nice and loud (Dad had said he should try to speak clearer, he was just doing what he was told) Dad had glared at him and told him it was rude for little boys to say that sort of thing. So he didn’t.
The boy probably didn’t mean to have wings anyway. Just like Sammy didn’t mean to make a mess in his pants (Dean didn’t make a mess in his pants, but that was because he was a child, and Sammy was a baby).
The boy didn’t talk. But that was okay. Sammy didn’t talk either. Dean was a good big brother, and he knew how to take care of someone even if they couldn’t tell him they were hurting or sad. The wings were kind of handy for that, actually. The boy kept them folded all neat and tidy most of the time, but when he got really happy and excited they shook out around him like the cock in Missouri’s hen yard when he was showing off to the pullets. And when he was sad, they went sort of quivery and hunched-up, and Dean would pat them until they were better.
The boy sort of reminded Dean of Cassie next door, with his big eyes and solemn expression. So he called him Cas. It made the boy smile, all wide and bright like Sammy would sometimes when Dad wasn’t around, so Dean kept doing it.
He didn’t tell anyone about the boy, because the boy belonged to the oak grove, and the oak grove was all Dean’s. It was where he went to be on his own when he was sad about Mum, or he was tired of the other kids his age being stupid, or Dad was looking dark and growly and too tall in that way he did sometimes.
Instead, Dean drew the boy in his precious notebook, like he drew everything: the weird rock he found in the sheep yard, the tracks of badgers and moles, the way Sammy giggled when you tickled him. The way Cas’ wings settled around them both when they curled up in the big folds of the tree roots at the end of the day. (Cas liked hugs. He also liked sort of nuzzling into Dean’s shoulder and falling asleep there, with all his damp breath and mussed hair. That made sense. Sammy liked those things, and Cas was sort of like Dean’s little brother too, because he obviously didn’t have a big brother of his own to look after him, or he wouldn’t be here all the time. Probably he didn’t have a mum either.)
Cas disappeared at the end of summer. Dean was a bit sad, but it was autumn, so he was busy Helping.
Dean was a good helper. Bobby told him so. He could run around the fields real fast to ask all the grown-ups whether they were thirsty or hungry yet, and he never forgot what each of them wanted. Well, nearly never.
When Dean was seven, and much bigger and cleverer, Cas came back. One day he wasn’t there, in the summer-green shade under the oaks, and the next day he was.
Dean greeted him with a happy shout and took his wrist to pull him over into the corner by the tree with the rats’ hole under it, because he’d just figured out how you could use the valley between those two big roots to play knights and ambushes, and that was better with two. Cas beamed his big silent beam and came along.
They played as many of Cas’ games as Dean’s that summer. Cas showed him how to work out where a rabbit’s burrows curved under the ground, and taught him a really complicated game with a grid scratched onto the ground and lots of different-coloured counters (Dean brought pebbles up from the creek). Dean had to learn to climb trees real good, because Cas was flying now, just a little way at a time but really flying, and he liked to flutter up into the trees and laugh at Dean from there when they played chasing games.
That summer, Dad found his drawings of Cas, and muttered something about kids and imagination. Dean didn’t say that Cas was real, because he thought Dad wouldn’t like that, and he knew it wasn’t a good idea to say things Dad didn’t like.
Cas wasn’t so silent that year. He still couldn’t speak, but he made all kinds of other noises, little squeals and giggles and snorts and grumbles, and a rude little sound with his tongue for when he thought Dean was being silly, which Dean always made right back at him. Dean decided it meant he was happy. He looked happy. Dean liked that, because it was up to him to make his little brothers happy.
Sammy was getting big enough to talk properly, that summer, and Dean spent hours bragging to Cas about him. He thought Cas probably liked it.
That winter, something came in with the snow and the ice, crossing the nice safe line of the wall. The thing tore at people’s faces and throats and bellies and left frozen bloody corpses by the stream. It wasn’t wolves or anything, because it could open locked doors and not leave a scratch on them.
The grown-ups went all serious and quiet, and then all the men and some of the women got together and went off on a hunt, they way they did sometimes, but it was inside the walls this time, not outside. They didn’t bring meat back, stag or boar or anything. They just brought back a head, something strange and distorted like a person with a dog’s muzzle, and they hung it up in the town square.
Dean’s dad looked big and dark in his bloodied furs, and his eyes had a gleam in them that Dean didn’t like. It was the first time he was ever afraid of Dad.
The next summer, when Cas came, he came in a flurry of feathers and long boyish limbs, hurtling down to pounce on Dean out of the branches of the oaks. Dean shouted and almost pulled a knife on him (because he was big enough to carry a knife now, and big enough to know why). Then he worked out who it was, and spent the next ten minutes cussing Cas out with daring words that he wasn’t allowed to use, and rubbing mud in his hair while Cas squirmed and squawked and stuck his fingers in Dean’s ribs and didn’t really try to get away.
It was good to see him.
This year, Dean was big enough to know that he really shouldn’t mention Cas to any grown-ups. Because he didn’t come from inside, which meant he could only come from outside. And there wasn’t anything outside that was human.
He didn’t tell Cas that, though.
That summer, Dean took Sammy down to the oak grove a lot, because he didn’t like leaving him alone with Dad more than he had to and Bobby couldn’t be around all the time. When he saw Cas, Sammy stared at him very hard, then held both his arms up straight over his head and said, “Up, please.”
(All the ladies thought Sammy was a really polite baby, but Sammy just used his manners because he knew it made people coo over him.)
Cas blinked at him for a moment like he didn’t know what Sammy was. But then he knelt down, and put his arms around him very carefully, like he got just how precious Sammy was, and lifted him up onto his hip from there. Sammy giggled and stuck his hands straight into Cas’ wings, and Cas jumped then sort of giggled back and rubbed his face against Sammy’s hair.
Dean decided that Cas was allowed to help look after his Sammy.
Turned out that Sammy was small enough for Cas to carry when he flew. Sammy loved it, spreading his arms and whooping without words through the wind, trusting Cas completely to hold on to him, not to let him fall.
Sammy always made Cas laugh real easy.
It didn’t matter if Sammy knew. Sammy wasn’t people, Sammy was Sammy, and no one except Dean ever listened to what Sammy had to say anyway.
Daemonium.
That was the word Bobby scrounged up for these new things, the new fear. The reason why people were suddenly being lured to their deaths, being haunted, hearing whispers in the night that made them not themselves. Cold dark smoke curling through the trees at night, and the smell of sulphur. The grinning black eyes of the possessed, when they finally succumbed and let the demon in, and it poured into their body to feed on everything left behind. Fear, and death: the demons lived on it. It didn’t matter whose.
Dean was the first person who actually saw a demon in its own body: the gnarled back-swept horns, the shaggy black fur over the hooves, the black forked tongue and the yellow eyes. He was the first one to see, because he was there when Dad died.
Bobby found them both there, five hours and six minutes after the demon had let Dad go. Five hours and five minutes and thirty-five seconds after Dad had reached out to pull Dean into his arms and almost looked like he might be proud of him, for once, just once, for thinking to load Bobby’s gun with rock salt instead of real rounds. Five hours and five minutes and thirty seconds after the demon had sent the rockslide thundering down the wall of the ravine. Three hours and twenty-two minutes after Dad had stopped breathing through his smashed chest (Dean could see bits in it).
Bobby got Dean out of there right away, left him with Ellen, and went back with Rufus and Bill and Jim for Dad.
Some folks wanted to help by taking Sammy into their house, but Dean wouldn’t let them. Dean had always looked after Sammy all by himself, and he could keep on doing that just fine.
That wasn’t when Dean stopped being a child, though. That came later, two months later, the next spring.
There was a woman, warm and soft, and she was pretty, and she smiled and held out her hand to him and promised without saying anything that she’d look after them both, she’d be like Mum for Sammy. Dean wouldn’t have to do everything himself, wouldn’t have to be so tired. He wouldn’t have to get angry with Sammy if Sammy didn’t eat or made a mess just when Dean had cleaned the floor, and she wouldn’t let Sammy get hurt in any of the hundreds of little ways that were always pressing about, so near. Dean would be able to sleep until the sun came up, if he wanted to. Sammy would stop being angry all the time, because he’d have a mother, which was what little boys needed (Dean had heard lots of grown-ups say that since Dad died).
The lady held out her hand, soft and pale and smelling like fresh bread and lavender, and the waterweeds whispered around her ankles.
Dean took a step nearer, then another. She laughed a little bit, kind of fond, then knelt down in the water and held out her arms, like she wanted to gather him in close and fix everything, and never let the world touch him again.
... That wasn’t right. Bobby said the only way to be sure you’re still alive in this world was that you keep fighting, boy, you just keep right on swinging while there’s breath in you, or you’re no better than a beast.
The water touched Dean’s toes. Dean flinched back. And the lady changed. Claws, long claws ripping through her fingers, hair swirling around her head lank and green like flat reeds, scrabbling hands that were all twigs clutching for Dean’s shirt, and he screamed and fell back, feeling his ankle twist under him and his fist connect with its jaw. Its skin was too cold, too clammy, and its mouth too long and open impossibly wide like a snake’s, right on top of him, clutching, and he flung himself backwards away from the water, falling blindly. Wet leaf litter against his cheek, harsh breaths, a sickening pain in his ankle, and the glorious sound of a gun shot right over his head. And then everything was still.
“If it ain’t shaped human, it ain’t human. You got that, boy?”
Dean stared past Bobby’s legs and muffled his mouth with his hand, because big boys didn’t sob.
The horrible thing shuddered and twitched into ghastly stillness on the leaf mold. The too-long face was pallid, white and grey like bone, and its slender fangs were slicing into its lower lip with the grimace of death. Just like Dad had bitten through his lip, when he died.
Dean dug his nails hard into his cheek, and didn’t say “But she was.”
That was when Dean stopped being a child.
Cas didn’t show that summer.
He didn’t show the next summer, either. Or the one after that.
Eventually, Dean stopped looking for him.
Dean was sixteen years old when he first heard the word angel.
Sure, he hadn’t really understood how bad things were when he was a kid, but even then they’d never been this bad. There were woodwoses and etayns and werewights, yes, and kelpies like the one that had nearly got him when he was nine. But now, every year, there were demons. More and more of them. And they didn’t even have to hop over the wall to make people feel their touch, the oily curl of their influence. Dozens of them, and there were so many empty houses, until some nights Dean thought it was all just a matter of time. That sooner or later they’d all fall, one by one. Turn in on themselves, turn outward against their neighbours, turn back their lips in that sickening dead grin, turn inhuman.
But other days Dean thought, hey, we could win here. We could tip the scales, if we’re lucky. Just a little bit harder, a little bit quicker, a little bit cleverer. A really good run of luck.
Only then the angels came.
Very human and beautiful, they looked, except for the wings stretching out against the sky. And voiceless, except for the piercing scream they screamed when you hurt them, that could make the blood run from a man’s ears if he hadn’t stuffed them carefully first. Beasts, but cunning beasts: outsmarting an angel was hard. And they were fierce: killing a few didn’t make the other ones back off and leave the human lands alone, like it did for woodwoses and wolves. They just came back in force. Bobby worked out some complex old symbols or writing that meant they couldn’t fly in over the wall, but every time anyone went outside the walls their lives were on the line.
They were under siege. And steel and iron and silver barely scratched them. There was no way to fight back - not that first year.
(Dean hid his old notebooks deep in the wall of their house, and neither he nor Sammy ever mentioned what was in them.)
This piece of art by the amazing jo_yumegari. Click to see full size.
