What October Brings

That Small, Furry, Sharp-toothed Thing Paul Dale Anderson

Some smart marketing genius labeled the “new this year” Brown Jenkin Halloween Costume: “Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s scariest character ever.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but one seldom expected truth in advertising.

Brown Jenkin appeared briefly as a minor fictional character in Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House,” published by Weird Tales in 1932. He was a small, furry, sharp-toothed witch’s familiar, part king-sized rat and part tiny human that supposedly died at the end of the story. He was scary. But nowhere near as scary as most of Lovecraft’s other creations.

Consisting of little more than a child-sized—one-size-fits-all-children ages three through ten—zippered synthetic-fiber bag with oval holes for arms, legs, and face to fit through, each Brown Jenkin costume came covered with what felt like real brown-colored human hair. The brown was an odd hue, like rust on nails or stains from dried blood.

Each cheaply-made costume sold for under twenty dollars. That coarse brown hair had to be fake fur. Although strands did look and feel like real human hair, there weren’t enough heads in the whole world to provide all that hair.

The accompanying feral face-mask appeared human-shaped with two oversized plastic fangs, not unlike a vampire’s, and those teeth also looked and felt incredibly sharp and real. The mask sold separately for an additional nine-ninety-five. Kids loved the costume because the combined effect was breathtakingly menacing. Few if any children, or even their parents, had ever read a word of H. P. Lovecraft’s actual works. But the name itself—familiar from television, motion pictures, and derivative mythos tales—invoked an unexplained chill, as if Lovecraft and Halloween and inescapable horror were synonymous.

Those marketing gurus certainly picked a winner this year. Brown Jenkin costumes sold out within a week of initially going on sale. Orders continued to pour in by the truckload, and sweatshops in the Far East added multitudes of 24/7 shifts of child laborers to be worked to death to meet demand.

As evidenced by a man-sized mouse with big saucer-shaped black ears who greeted kids at fantasy theme parks, children worldwide possessed a natural fascination with anthropomorphized rodents. On the night of All-Hallows’ Eve, they would eagerly don Brown Jenkin costumes to become little sharp-toothed furry things. I refused to allow my own two children to be among them.

You see, I’d actually read the entire Necronomicon as a graduate student in Massachusetts, back when I worked part-time as Library Assistant in the archives of Miskatonic University Library. I knew Brown Jenkin wasn’t the Devil’s pawn.

He was Cthulhu’s.

I dared not permit my own children to dress and act as Nyarlathotep’s messenger on a night when veils between worlds were thinnest. Although eight-year-old Davey and seven-year-old Julie pleaded and begged, cried and cajoled, and finally threatened, I steadfastly refused.

Linda, my blissfully ignorant wife, chided me for being overly harsh and rigid. “Why not let Davey and Julie enjoy a pagan holiday? What’s the harm in it, John? Let them have fun while they’re young. Heaven knows, they’ll grow up soon enough.”

“No,” I said, remaining resolute.

Little did Linda know that I, in my own impressionable youth, became so enamored of Lovecraft’s weird tales of elder gods and witchcraft I fervently sought out forbidden books—the dreaded Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, the fragmentary Book of Eibon, and the suppressed Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junz—to read first-hand in their original incantations at Arkham. My duties as a student Library Assistant required me to accompany scholars researching those ancient texts into the archive’s vaults to assure they did not steal or damage priceless and irreplaceable artifacts. Many tried to do so. Therefore, I was required to leaf through each book or manuscript while wearing pristine white gloves before returning the work to its designated shelf. Of course, I read whenever possible.

By the time I graduated, I’d digested them all. I knew, for a fact, the fabled Lovecraftian mythos was not pure myth but hinted at a truth far beyond human understanding. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies.

Lovecraft was, however, wrong about one essential. The oldest and strongest kind of fear was not fear of the unknown but fear of the known. Knowing what to expect and knowing there was nothing I, or anyone, could do to stop it from occurring, wasn’t simply horrifying but utterly terrifying.

As Halloween approached, fear gripped me with icy tentacles. Incredible visions—daydreams and nightmares—filled my head, awakened weird memories in the back of my brain. I grew feverish. Linda complained I cried out often and talked nonsense in my sleep.

Only I was certain it was far from nonsense. It was prophecy.

Each trip to the local pharmacy, grocery, or department store brought me face to face with sold-out Brown Jenkin displays near the front of a store. “We can’t keep them in stock,” a harried clerk at checkout informed the young mother in line ahead of me. “As soon as we get a new shipment in, it sells out. Come back next week. We may have more then.”

Television stations blasted Brown Jenkin commercials incessantly, at least every quarter hour, and my poor children were constantly bombarded with images of small, furry, sharp-toothed things toting bags overflowing with delicious treats on Halloween night. Davey and Julie wanted to be exactly like those kids in the commercials. They grew to hate me. I could feel resentment eating away at our already fragile parent-child relationship.

“You’re being totally irrational,” Linda said, repeatedly taking their side against me. “What harm is there, really, in dressing up for Halloween? Everyone does it, for Christ’s sake! You’re acting like a superstitious fool, John, making life miserable for all of us.”

She didn’t know what I knew. How could I tell her? How could I make her see what I saw?

“Too many fever dreams,” she would say. “You’re not well, John. You must see a doctor.”

“A shrink? You think I’m crazy? You think I need a psychiatrist?”

“You need something. Something to help you sleep. Go see a regular doctor. Maybe a physician can give you a prescription. You haven’t slept soundly for months, not since Halloween displays first appeared in stores. You toss and turn. You cry out. Sometimes you get out of bed to wander around like a zombie, and when you wake you have no memory of where you went or what you did. That’s not good, John. You can’t go on like this. I can’t go on like this. If you don’t see a doctor, I’ll take the kids and leave.”

Reluctantly, I agreed to see a doctor. Not today, but soon. I promised. Scout’s honor. “Hope to die if I lie,” I told her.

As the days passed and each night became dark longer than the night before, I grew ever more anxious, more fearful. I was certain something cataclysmic was about to happen. Those Brown Jenkin costumes were but a portent of terrible things to come.

Visions of giant rats and bloodied children filled my feverish dreams. I swore my children would not be among those sacrificed on All Hallows’ Eve. I would prevent it. Or I would die trying.

No matter how much they cajoled, pleaded, cried, or acted out, I stuck to my guns. No Brown Jenkin costumes for Davey and Julie. If they wanted to dress up for Halloween, they should dress like Count Dracula or Cinderella. I really didn’t care if they celebrated Halloween this year or any other. All I cared about was keeping my children out of the clutches of Cthulhu and his minions.

For was it not written in those ancient texts that on certain nights like All Hallows’ Eve, doors between worlds opened wide and the call of Great Cthulhu could be plainly heard by all creatures bearing the mark of the beast? In my visions, during my most fevered dreams, I saw children dressed as small, furry, sharp-toothed things responding to that call for sacrifice like rats dancing to the eerie tunes played by a fish-faced Pied Piper.

I dreaded Davey and Julie might be among them.

Linda kept insisting I see a doctor, and I finally relented and visited Doctor Jared Hornsby, our family physician. My boss told me to take a week of accrued vacation time to get well, because I sure as hell didn’t look good. He said my work had recently plunged downhill, and if I didn’t fix whatever was wrong, he’d be forced to fire me.

Doctor Hornsby determined my physical and mental health had rapidly deteriorated from recurrent panic attacks, diagnosed me as suffering from general anxiety and seasonal affective disorders, and prescribed powerful medications to help me relax and induce sleep. “Take two of these tiny tranquilizers in the morning and one of the huge horse pills every four hours.” He wrote another script for sleeping aids. “Take one tablet an hour before bedtime. You need to sleep, John, if you want to get well. These should do the trick. If they don’t, we’ll simply adjust the dosage until they do.”

I thanked the doctor and visited the local pharmacy to fill the three prescriptions. I couldn’t help but notice the store’s Brown Jenkin display had recently been replenished. When I came face to face with the object of my anxiety at checkout, the fear I felt threatened to consume me.

How could a child’s Halloween costume drive a grown man mad?

I don’t remember what I said. I don’t remember what I did. Later, I do remember police snapping handcuffs on my wrists and leading me to a patrol car, then placing protective hands on the crown of my head so I didn’t crack open my skull on a metal doorframe and sue the police department for brutality.

I was photographed, fingerprinted, and spent the night in jail. Linda bailed me out the next morning after she explained to authorities that I suffered from occasional panic attacks and I’d be fine once I began taking appropriate medication. In fact, I was in the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions when I experienced another panic attack. I didn’t know what I was doing when I smashed the Halloween display, tore dozens of costumes to shreds, and nearly torched the entire store. Since it was obvious I was indeed ill, and I had no previous police record, I was released into my loving wife’s custody. Linda wrote a check for damages, and the pharmacy dropped all charges.

“What on earth got into you?” Linda demanded as she drove me home. “I swear, I don’t know you anymore, John. You’re not the man I married.”

She made me take all my meds. Then she put me to bed and left for her job downtown. If my job were in peril, she said, she definitely needed to retain hers.

Fortunately, I had the rest of the week off from work. I followed the doctor’s advice to the letter. I took my prescribed medications religiously, got plenty of sleep, and began to feel more like myself.

Until, alone in the house all day while Linda was at work and Julie and Davey were in school, I perceived furtive scrapings and scratchings within the walls.

It sounded as if something tried desperately to get inside the bedroom from outside, something that couldn’t open doors but was nonetheless determined to reach and destroy me.

To tear me apart like I had torn those Brown Jenkin costumes apart.

One part of my mind said it was only my own overactive imagination while another part insisted the scratching noise was real. We lived in a nice, quiet middle-class neighborhood out in the landscaped suburbs, the house relatively new. Rats had never been a problem before. Why now? Why did I hear such noises only two days before Halloween?

I got out of bed and attempted to track those scraping and scratching sounds to their source. There! I heard it again! Scratching. Like tiny claws tearing away at drywall.

Our bedroom was on the second floor of a modern two-story Cape Cod. The children’s rooms were directly across the hall. Did rats climb? Had they climbed up inside the walls to get to me? To get at my children? Was no one safe? Was no place, not even the marital bed, sacred?

Don’t be silly, my rational brain coaxed. Maybe it’s time to take more meds. Double the dose. That’s what Doctor Hornsby would recommend. No need to call him. No need to shell out another co-pay. Just do it.

Get an axe, the other part of my brain urged. Rip into the walls and find the little bastards. Chop them up. Make mincemeat of them. Get them all before they get you.

Torn between two minds, I did nothing as the scratching sounds continued from within the walls.

Those clawing noises became even more frantic when the kids came home from school. They ceased entirely, however, when Linda arrived home from work shortly afterwards. She found me standing in the bedroom staring at the wall. The room was unearthly quiet.

“What in the world are you doing out of bed? You need your rest, John. How can you expect to recover if you don’t sleep? You’re not sleepwalking again, are you?”

Her words snapped me out of the fugue I’d been in. “I hear strange noises and can’t sleep,” I responded. “The meds aren’t strong enough.”

“Then tell the doctor, not me,” she said. “Have him phone a stronger prescription to the pharmacy. I’ll pick it up for you. I don’t want you anywhere near that pharmacy until after Halloween. Your last visit cost us over six hundred dollars.”

“Six hundred dollars?”

“Your rampage destroyed or ruined their entire stock of two dozen costumes and masks. They’d just arrived that morning and a dozen were out on display with the rest stacked nearby in boxes. You ripped the display apart, tore up the costumes, and somehow set fire to the full boxes. They erupted in flames as if constructed of combustible material waiting for a spark to ignite and completely consume them.”

“I told you those costumes were dangerous!”

“Oh, stop it! Stop being such an ass. It’s not the costumes that are dangerous, John. It’s you. You’re a danger to yourself, to me, to our children. I’m certainly not scared of any silly Halloween costume. But I am scared of you, John. I’m scared of what you might do.” She picked up the phone and handed it to me. “Call the doctor. Do it now. Tell him you need stronger medications. I’ll get the kids ready and take them with me. We’ll pick the pills up for you. I want you to get into that bed and stay there. Don’t go anywhere or do anything.”

I telephoned the doctor, got transferred to his answering service, left a message. Twenty minutes later, Doc Hornsby called back. I explained all that had happened since he saw me three days ago. Hornsby agreed to double the strength of my meds, adding two more prescriptions to the ones I already had. He also agreed to telephone them directly to the pharmacist.

After Linda and the children left to pick up my new pills, those weird scrapings and scratchings resumed behind the drywall. I remained in bed and tried to ignore them.

Despite the incessant noise, I fell deeply asleep. I suppose I could blame the sleeping pills Linda insisted I swallow before she departed, or perhaps the raging fever that suddenly came over me after she was gone, but I’m certain the real reason I fell asleep was because that repetitive noise lulled me to dreamland as surely as a lullaby, sung by my long-dead mother, had so often lulled me to sleep as an infant.

I dreamed, and my dreams were horrible nightmares. Like other fever dreams I’d recently experienced, these were crudely disjointed and made little logical sense. Surreal landscapes, houses with no doors and no windows, people with no faces, raced past as if I rode aboard a speeding train and they stood still.

And then my train derailed taking a curve atop a high cliff overlooking the ocean while proceeding ten times too fast to remain on the tracks, and I was falling, falling…

And down, sang my long-dead mother’s voice, will come cradle, baby and all!

As the train plunged into the sea, tentacles of the same puke-green hue as the waves, reached out for me, wrapped suckers around both of my arms and legs, and dragged me deeper into the fathomless depths. Down, down, down into madness.

I couldn’t breathe. My lungs threatened to burst within my chest. Darkness enveloped me like a shroud. Certainly, goodness and mercy had deserted me and only death waited for me at the bottom of the sea.

Only there was no bottom. I fell and fell, pulled ever-downward by gravity and those terrible tentacles.

Down into an ancient city that had existed on the floor of the ocean nearly forever, fabled Atlantis or lost Lemuria, I knew not which. There was an eerie green glow, some kind of bioluminescence, that illuminated tall spires on a foreboding castle where the ruler of this underground kingdom must reside. Off in the distance, mountain-like crags rose where shifting tectonic plates had buckled bedrock, beyond which seemingly-bottomless caverns yawned.

All kinds of aquatic creatures inhabited this land beneath the sea, including many with rows of teeth sharper than a shark’s and some with eyes and hands that looked human.

As tentacle suckers deposited me on solid ground outside the castle walls and withdrew, releasing me to wander this strange place on my own, I found I could breathe again, almost as if I had grown gills, which I discovered I had.

Moving about in water of any depth is difficult. It’s nearly impossible on the bottom of an ocean. Two-legged creatures weren’t meant to walk on or under water, but I managed to make my way inside the castle as if drawn there by some invisible force like iron to a magnet. Once inside the castle walls, I no longer had to fight the currents.

My feet became flippers. Fins sprouted along my spine.

The stone edifice felt familiar to me. I had seen it often enough before, I suppose, not in my own dreams, but in the vivid imaginings of others. It looked a lot like the castle wherein Sleeping Beauty lay dreaming of Prince Charming, as depicted in illustrated books of children’s fairy tales.

Now I could discern the odd shape of everything wasn’t simply because water distorted and bent visual images but was really because the shapes I saw were unlike anything I’d previously witnessed anywhere. Walls appeared jointed at weird angles, doorways were misshapen, roofs peaked like a tall black witch’s hat.

I was wrong. This place wasn’t like castles pictured in fairy tales but more like the demented drawings of M. C. Escher.

It wasn’t built for humans. Nor by humans. It was already ancient when Adam and Eve left Eden.

Some entranceways were quite huge, tall and wide enough for an elephant or whale to easily pass through. Others were minuscule, like mouse holes chewed in baseboards of old houses. Floors were slanted and made not of bricks nor wood nor cobblestones but of human bones piled together one atop another.

The castle was a charnel house, the bones picked clean of flesh.

If I could have fled, I would have run away as fast and as far as my legs would carry me. Everything about this place was repulsive to humans. Unfortunately, some obscure compulsion assured the only direction my feet would move was deeper into that unspeakable darkness at the heart of the castle where neither sunlight nor bioluminescence penetrated and a monstrous evil eagerly awaited my arrival.

Although no humanly-perceptible sound existed in such total darkness at the bottom of the sea, I swore I discerned scrapings and scratchings and titterings like those inside the walls of my own home. Surely, there were no rats this far under water.

Again, I was wrong.

Swarms of small, furry, sharp-toothed things emerged from the darkness calling my name.

“John!” I felt their paws upon me, shaking me, repeatedly slapping my face. “John! Wake up!”

I opened my eyes to find Linda, my wife, plus David and Julie, my two children, staring at me as if I were a stranger, an alien from another galaxy or different dimension, who had invaded their otherwise-normal world.

“We returned from the pharmacy to discover you wandering aimlessly around a neighbor’s back yard in your pajamas, thoroughly soaked in salty-smelling sweat, as if your fever spiked and you didn’t know where you were or what you were doing. You broke your promise, John. You promised me you’d stay in bed, and you didn’t. I can’t trust you anymore.”

I saw I was indeed in the back yard adjacent to our own, my nightclothes drenched as if I’d been for a swim in the ocean. Since we lived a thousand miles from the nearest seaport, visiting an ocean was patently impossible in the brief time it took Linda and the kids to go to the pharmacy and back.

Linda insisted on moving me from the master bedroom I shared with her into the guest bedroom on the first floor. “Just until you get well,” she said. “We’ll both sleep better if we don’t sleep together.”

I changed into a fresh pair of pajamas, got into the twin-sized bed, and Linda pulled the covers up over me. She handed me two pills and a glass of water.

“Take these new sleeping pills Doctor Hornsby prescribed. I’ll wake you in time for supper.”

My hopes that a different room might be free of rats in the walls were shattered as soon as Linda left me alone. The furious scratchings and scrapings had followed me downstairs like stink follows excrement.

I was afraid of going to sleep, afraid I’d find myself back in that castle under the sea. If Linda hadn’t awakened me when she did, I’d have come face to face with the evil that resided therein.

I must have slept, though, because the next thing I knew, she was calling me to the dining room for supper. If I had dreamt, I could not remember about what.

Julie and Davey were already seated at the table. Linda brought individual salads from the kitchen, then baked tuna casserole in a serving dish. Our children hated green vegetables and fish, and the only way they would eat either was to hide them beneath layers of noodles and cheese. Tonight, however, they both ate their salads without complaint, and they dug into the casserole with an ardor I’d not seen before.

I, too, devoured a salad and consumed two large helpings of casserole. I was hungrier than I thought.

“Feeling better?” Linda asked.

“Those new sleeping pills really worked,” I said. “I got the first decent sleep I’ve had in weeks.”

We managed to get through an entire meal without Julie or Davey beseeching me to buy Brown Jenkin costumes for them. The children were unusually cheerful and complacent tonight.

Maybe I had been unreasonable, as Linda often accused me of being, to forbid our children to dress in such cursed costumes. How unfair it must seem to Davey and Julie that I didn’t want them to be like all their friends. Should I relent at the last moment and allow them to dress like other kids?

I was beginning to see everything so much clearer now after just a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Perhaps, by tomorrow, I’d have regained a proper perspective. There was still time. I could sleep on it and make a rational decision in the morning.

I told Linda what I was thinking. She smiled at me for the first time in weeks.

She wouldn’t allow me to help with the dishes. “Julie and Davey will do dishes,” she said. “I want you back in bed. Take another sleeping pill. Get a full night’s rest.” She kissed my cheek. “Goodnight, John. Day after tomorrow is Halloween. Then all the nightmares will be over.”

I took her advice, swallowed two more of the new pills, crawled beneath the covers, and fell asleep almost immediately. If I dreamed at all, I couldn’t remember any of it when I awoke.

Bright sunlight streamed through the windows, I glanced at the digital alarm clock next to the bed. It read 10:05 am.

Davey and Julie were attending school where they belonged. Linda was busy at her job downtown. The house was all mine. I could turn over and go back to sleep, if I wanted.

And then I heard the scratchings begin again inside the walls, and I knew I wasn’t alone. I lay in bed and listened. How many rats were there in those four walls? How big were the rodents? How long would it take for them to claw or chew their way through the drywall to reach me?

Why me?

And then it dawned on me, as if the early morning fog had finally burned off my brain to reveal the brightness of naked truth: Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

If Cthulhu’s minions desired my children as sacrifices to the Great Old Ones on All Hallows’ Eve, they needed to get me out of the way first, either by killing me or by driving me crazy. I knew far too much, and my steadfast refusal to allow Julie and Davey to don Brown Jenkin costumes on Halloween, which provided the mark of the beast to identify suitable sacrifices, foiled their plans.

I was the fly in their ointment. I posed a threat and needed to be eliminated.

Those horrible scratching and scraping, clawing and chewing sounds seemed to grow louder and more frantic with each passing moment. The rats were coming to get me, to rip me apart with their razor-sharp claws and needle-pointed canines.

I decided I had to find a way to kill them before they killed me.

Throwing the covers aside, I leapt out of bed. If I had plenty of time, I’d set rat traps or call in an exterminator. But tomorrow was Halloween. I had to do something today. I needed a moment to think what to do.

I dressed in jeans and an old sweatshirt. Then I went to the kitchen to make coffee. Despite getting a full night’s sleep, I was still drowsy. Those new sleeping pills were powerful, and I’d taken two tablets instead of the prescribed one. I’d think clearer after a cup or two of coffee.

While the coffee brewed, I glanced at today’s paper Linda left for me on the kitchen table.

The date on the masthead read October 31. That had to be wrong.

I checked my cell phone. Then my computer. Then I phoned Linda at work.

“How can today be the thirty-first?”

“You slept for two entire days, John. I knew you need the sleep, so I didn’t try to wake you.”

“Tonight’s Halloween?”

“It is.”

“Shit!” I said and hung up.

There was no time to waste. I had to get rid of those damn rats before they got rid of me.

Get an axe, my brain urged. Rip into the walls and find the little bastards. Chop them up. Make mincemeat of them. Get them all before they get you.

I kept an old axe in the garage, along with other outdoor tools like rakes and shovels. I ran to the garage, found the rusted axe, and returned to the house.

I spent the rest of the day tearing the walls apart, beginning with the second-floor master bedroom and continuing to the children’s rooms, and finally the downstairs bedroom. I found no rats, no evidence of rat droppings, no proof rats had ever existed anywhere in the entire house.

It was almost dark when I finally fell exhausted atop the bed, popped another sleeping pill, and allowed my eyes to close, my mind to go blank. Linda and the children should be home soon, and I didn’t know how to face them. I’d destroyed the drywall in four rooms of the house, caused thousands of dollars of damage, and for what? To fend off something that existed only in fever dreams?

How could I have been wrong about so many things?

When next I woke, the house was completely dark. I switched on a bedside lamp and looked around. I was all alone in an empty house.

Linda and the kids should be home by now. The alarm showed 7:12 pm. Where were they? Why weren’t they here?

Then the doorbell rang, and I heard children’s voices singing, “Trick or treat.”

I picked up the axe and moved into the living room, turned on the porch light, peeked through the peephole in the front door. I saw two small, furry, sharp-toothed things standing on the porch.

The rats were coming for me, and I was ready for them. I raised the axe. I opened the door.

I swung the axe.

One thing marketing geniuses knew that I didn’t was humans, not unlike rats, were herd animals. No one wanted to be different, to feel left out. People, especially children, needed to be accepted as part of the pack, as “normal”, to be essentially the same as everybody else. Of all the things human beings feared, being excluded or left out of the herd topped the list.

Davey and Julie devoutly desired to be among the thousands of children dressed as Brown Jenkin on Halloween. In my fevered state, I’d been oblivious to their pleas. But their mother hadn’t. She’d outfitted them in remnants of the costumes I destroyed at the pharmacy and she’d paid for. On Halloween night, she took them trick or treating, and the children insisted on visiting their father to show me their costumes.

When I heard Linda scream, I knew the truth. After all, as Lovecraft once said, “the strangest and maddest of myths are often merely symbols or allegories based upon truth.”

My children had been marked for sacrifice from the moment I’d read the forbidden Necronomicon. The true mark of the beast was the fevered dream that consumed me, not the singed man-made costumes Linda had salvaged from the remains of the pharmacy fire. If I hadn’t been a true believer, none of this would have come to pass. I, the madman, not the fabled Brown Jenkin nor Nyarlathotep nor even Great Cthulhu caused this tragedy to occur. I, alone, am to blame.

For I am alone. From this moment forward, I shall always be alone, a true outsider.

I raised the axe and stilled Linda’s screams.

And then I began hunting small, furry, sharp-toothed things wherever I might find them.

“Cthulhu fhtagn!” I shouted, as I hefted the bloodied axe onto one shoulder and disappeared into the darkness.