Zaccuriatus: Child of Darkness

Introductions

“Boh! BOY! Where ya be, boh!”

Zacharias lurched to his feet, rubbing the crusties from his eyes.

“Ya bein’ sleepin’? Stupid boh!”

Zacharias’ eyes locked onto the twinkling buckle, swaying in the sunlight. His mind hollered and wailed for him to run. His skin from his skull’s base down to the soles of his feet shrieked, knowing full well what was coming next.

“Ah— Ah— Ah wa—”

The man swatted the boy’s raised hands, shoving him to the ground, and then grabbed his wrist, dragging him to his feet.

“Wha’ ah tell ya about dem dere cows?”

“They are worth more than mah life?” replied the boy, tears wallowing at the edges of his eyes.

The man shook the boy violently.

“Knock that there off!” he yelled as he cupped the back of the boy’s head. “How many times Ah gotta tell ya to not be uh whiner?” He shouted, his face mere inches from the boy’s.

The boy’s resolve broke. Torrents of sobs shook his body.

“Ah said, SHUT IT!” hollered the man as he spun the boy around. He yanked the boy’s pants down with the boy’s pleading being drowned out by his own sobs. With the pants at the boy’s ankles the man then yanked his shirt up, shoving the boy against the tree he had been napping under.

“Pa! P— Please, Pa!”

“Ya heard what Father Bennett said. If ah spare ya from yur punishins, then ah’ll be the one payin’ and ah’m not raisin’ no hellion boh!”

The buckle glinted through the sunlight before it added an opening for another scar on the child’s body.

***

The belt’s lashings didn’t end until the sobbing was gone. The blood ran down his legs. The screaming and sobbing had ended lashings ago as his head began to fog.

The boy was again trying to stand, his body shaking with the effort. He just wanted his hands back where his pa had put them, on the tree’s trunk as high as he could reach. The man’s chest heaved as it struggled to fill his lungs at their demanded rate.

“Now get out thar and bring ‘em cows in before we gots’ta come back ta this here tree,” he muttered as he wiped blood splatter from his lips, disgusted that he had accidentally tasted it.

The boy turned towards where the man had indicated, dragging his body, forcing it merely by his will alone to obey him and do as he had been bidden.

***

A few hours later he was laying on his tummy, over top of some straw, gritting his teeth and crying out in pain.

“Shut ya mouth, ya hear? Your pa told me about yur misbehavins. On top uh that, ya got the awduhcity to ask fur supper?! I ain’t having it, ya hear?”

“Yes, mum,” replied the boy in between his now silenced whimpers.

“Just be glad I ain’t letting you get no infection.” She thought for a moment, shook her head and then took notice of the boy again. She grabbed his ear pulling up on it and he cried out. “That there physician costs too much and ah ain’t havin’ you cost us that glint that we ain’t got, ya hear? A balancin’ alone would cost yur pa a new moon’s wage. Are ya listenin’ to me?” She splashed the water she had been using on his face, startling him awake. “Ya keep this up and yur pa’s gunna put ya back in till ya learn yurself them manners. Then again, that’ll prolly balance ya right too.”

***

The boy clung to the rope, his feet barely fitting in this minuscule bucket.

“Yur ma says ya need uh balancin’. So, back in ya gots tuh go.”

“Pa! Please Pa! Dey hurt! Please, please Pa! Ah promise ah’ll be good! Ah swear!”

“Ya’d dare ta swear! Ha’nt ya done enough?” asked the man in shocked disbelief.

He opened his hand. The rope whistled, going so fast that the crank’s handle blurred from sight.

The boy screamed as he plummeted down to the water with a splash. He resurfaced, thrashing his arms about wildly, trying to keep his nose above the water. The water burned his open wounds, reaching from a few ending on his neck and tops of his shoulders, to the tendons on the backs of his ankles. His feet finally found the top of the bucket as he tried to balance on its raised edges, where the handle was attached. He faltered, the water enveloping his face and rushing into his gasping mouth and nose. He resurfaced again, the bucket finding a somewhat flat resting place.

He coughed water, it spilling from his face, as his body desperately tried to stop it from reaching his lungs. He remembered to rotate his arms in slight circles. That is what helped him stay up last time. How long ago was that? It seemed like this morning, but it couldn’t have been because he remembered waking on the crimson dyed straw this morning, a nasty pass of air from Anabel, their goat, waking him. He kept his head tilted back to stop the water from slipping into his nose and mouth, this much he couldn’t forget.

***

They’d found him. He hated them, all of them. Their nasty, black, ‘n’ slimy bodies. It didn’t matter how many he killed because there always seemed to be more. When the man came back, they’d be covering him from head to toe, for sure. It wasn’t a question of if he would, no that was certain. No, the when was always the question though. There wasn’t a way to tell. One time he had been put in here when the leaves were just beginning to get those pretty yellow lines in them, and when he’d been brought out, there weren’t any leaves on the branches, only on the ground with that nasty cold, white stuff. He hated remembering what it was like that time. The thought of having to eat, when it was only him and these black things in here with him, and then what he’d had to drink after, where he’d rather not remember reliving himself, sent a shiver down his spine worse than the cold.

During the cold nights, he had to huddle up with the animals, mind you. Nasty things, covered in poo and other foul-smelling things, but he couldn’t go up to the loft. There wasn’t any heat up there. Only down there with them.

He opened his eyes gazing up at the bright sky.

“Pa! Please, pa! Leave it open! Ah’ll be quiet! Honest! PLEASE, PA! Pa Ah’m scared! Please!” he cried as the lid was slowly slid over the hole and dropped into its notched place.