A Trade with the Ghoul King

The place was dark, smelled of dirt, rotting compost, and rotting meat. Main Allan stood in the dank room holding a lantern. He could hear creatures moving in the darkness outside the illuminated aria.

Finally one spoke, it had claimed to be the Ghoul King. “Do you have it?” It asked greedily.

“I do.” Mark replied. He took an old piece of jewelry out of his pocket, tarnished and scratched.

“Give it to me!” The Ghoul King demanded, “Give it to me! It is mine!”

“Yours? It belonged to a woman named Julia.”

“Dead! Dead and gone she was. Three days dead, with mold and maggots for flavor. Dead and gone from age, our bellies she filled. No more need for trinkets. Mine now it is!”

The thought of these creatures feasting on the old lady sickened him. He thought of Melanie, imagining her bloated corpse being eaten by these creatures.

“Return what is mine!” The Ghouls King yelled. Main could hear movement around him, just outside the light of the lantern.

“I will return it in exchange for someone.”

“Someone? Bodies we have, festering and bloated.”

“I have her body, I need her soul.”

The King was silent, Main could hear murmuring around him, in a language he didn’t understand. “You seek to do an unholy act?” The Ghouls King finally asked.

“My beloved was taken by consumption, she is now a sleeping beauty waiting for me to wake her. I promised to save her, I swore to God I would bring her back even if I have to move heaven and earth!”

“We do not collect souls, we take the bodies of the dead.”

“But you live at the edge of life and death, you know the paths between this world and the next.”

“There is only the path of fools.”

“I may be a fool, but I will bring my beloved back, one way or another! Even if it damns me!”

Main heard more of the Ghulish language deep and guttural. “If you insist, me you fallow.”

“How can I follow you if I don’t see you?”

“My voice you follow.” The King paused, “this way.” The voice of the Ghoul King was moving to the left of Main.

Main followed the Ghoul King down a passage, the King keeping ahead of the light from the lantern. The passage was carved out of stone with murals on the walls. The murals showed the corpses of great hairy elephantine beasts, maneless Lions, Hippos, and humans. The humans wore pelts and had tools made of stone. Further on the murals documented what looked like a Ghoul war ending the the coronation of a king. Main saw images of Ghouls grotesque in form with pale skin, pug noses, pointed ears that stuck out, large dark eyes, sharp teeth but with expensive fabrics and jewelry. Each image with some kind of writing underneath. The writing continued, line after line. More depictions of the bodies of people, ancient people, then Celtic, then Roman, and onto modern people. The writing continued, it wasn’t of the Latin alphabet, or Greek, or runic, nor cuneiform or Chinese. It looked scratched into the wall in countless shapes.

“This is your history?” Main asked.

“Long we live, much we forget. Create records on the walls so we do not forget.”

“Really?” Main replied skeptically.

“Two thousand years I have reigned. My predecessor reigned for four thousand years. Fifteen generations my kin have ruled.”

“That would be tens of thousands of years.”

“Yes. Fae, and Elf, and Dwarf they called us. Some even thought us gods.”

Main looked at the murals.

“How can you live so long?”

“Old we are, older than man and beast. For us the world was made, a would of death and rot for us to eat.

Main looked at the darkness ahead of him, he couldn’t believe what the Ghoul King said, it went against everything he had learned, everything the church taught him, everything his alchemical studies told him, everything his occult studies told him.

“Stop,” The King told Main.

He stopped at a fork in the passage. To his left a passage led to a room with an open metal door.

“In there, there is the path to what you seek.”

Main walked slowly to the door. A strong smell of rot and death came from the room. He looked back before entering the room, the Ghoul King kept out of the light. The room was a dead end.

The door slammed shut, Main heard the door lock. He turned around, pulled on the door, banged on the door.

“There is only one path to what you seek, the path of fools, the path of death. When three days dead you are, with mold and maggots for flavor, we will eat and what is mine will be mine again!”

Main banged on the door, demanded to be let out but no one replied. The stench burned his eyes, made him sick. Main looked around the room for another way out, he only found stone walls and rotting corpses. His head hurt, he felt dizzy. Main noticed the light dimming, the lantern still had plenty of oil but the flame was dying.

Image by Evelyn Chai from Pixabay