Building Horror early – This Story needs Fixing

Fair proud a lad I was, and bold, so when the healer sent me to look for the royal’s berry, “Crimson the fruit, and set upon a throne of three leaves, no more and no less, green shot through with purple, like unto the robes of our fair Duke, who holds the throne in waiting ever” — I rode much farther than wise down the Nixie Path. Legend had it that if night fell while you were on this way, then you would ride into the Hidden End, never to return. Bold indeed I was, and a fool beside, so I spurred my pony into the hanging vines and narrow reaches of that path.

The way was gloomy but the air still fresh, as ever it was where the Hidden People live, so once an hour as close as I could judge I would dismount and bow to each corner of the rose in reverence. “Spirits of the Forest, East, West, South, and North, bear the passage of my humble pony and myself. I come not to harm any creature but in search of your gift, as our people have for these many years.” So it was I believe that no harm was done to me and had I no fell vision until the fifth hour of my search. I was off my pony and pulling aside the bracken, seeing any herb but the berry I sought, when a trail of purple-veined leaves caught my eye.

I remembered the story of Bung, a crude and rough man, who traveled with a few companions down this same path, knowing little of its history and legend. Bung saw a great buck deer jump across the path, and so drew his bow and shot the beast. The shadows in the forest, they say, drew longer in a moment, and the day went inky dark, the men stumbling and crying out as unseen hands grabbed them and dragged them to the ground. The men could not move, strive though they might, and fear gripped them even stronger as they heard whispering voices all around in a tongue they could not understand and felt the touch of tiny hands on their faces and hands and in their clothes. So they laid on the cold ground the day and the night, until sunrise, when their unseen bonds melted away. Then they saw Bung, and they shook like leaves on a bough, for Bung was yet alive but not Bung anymore. His chest was pierced by his own arrow, and his hands were bloody from trying to pull it out, but he could not speak, for from the neck up his head was that of the buck he’d shot, its tongue swollen and black, antlers marred with its own gore. The thing that used to be Bung died before they got him back to our village. May the Light keep his soul.