A story I wrote circa 2005, not sure if it’s the kind of creepy you’re looking for, but whatever.

Warning: It’s kind of long.

The Return of Zaros

“Yerunth Dominus Heteion Zynthum…” The coarse, burning words of a deceased tongue, a language of the purest, most perfect hatred and malice, poured from the putrefying, scabrous lips of the Gate Priest. The speech that would have seared a mortal’s mouth raw merely from its utterance continued to spew forth like the pus from a lanced boil.

“Retryx Xylontinaeitum De Helkitlytre Jul…” A new sound rang out, startlingly hale and healthy over the diseased, vile chant, which still perpetually underscored the new noises.

“Agghhh!! Let me GO! Ple-ple-pleeeaseee!” the new voice cried, before dissolving once again into pathetically helpless, panicked sobs. The second of the four putrescent Gate Priests dragged the astoundingly beautiful woman into the center of the chamber, her vibrantly blonde locks stained a malignant blood red from the guttering torches on the wall. She appeared all for the world as a brilliantly blooming bluebell in the midst of a stagnant mire, an outstandingly pure peonie in the center of a disgusting bog.

She had long since been stripped of her clothing, as well as her dignity and very nearly her sanity. The speech of the first Gate Priest was boring into her mind as a weevil bores into a nut. Within a matter of a few dozen seconds, crimson blood began dripping from her ears, turned ever more scarlet by the dim, flickering light from the sconces and braziers.

“Fedrikhens Wevevrum! Ki Le Zaros A Lyentudrediut…” The wicked sin of language rose in pitch at the arrival of the Blessed One, the very last rite in the decades-long preparation for the ritual of rebirth and renewal that the Gate Priests had been spending the majority of their un-lives doing. The magnificently carved and bejeweled altar in the center of the circular room was long-since permanently blackened with the remnants of the earlier rites’ victims.

Though covered with brilliantly blue sapphires, verdant green emeralds, and diamonds of crystal clarity, every single gem adorning the altar looked as the ruby.

Struggling both with all her might and completely in futility, the unclothed maiden was forced onto the altar by the third of the Gate Priests, her purely translucent, pale white body cruelly chained to the stained, corrupted altar of sin. The fourth Gate Priest slowly drew a tattered and torn cloth off of yet another, smaller, altar, this one, however, even more filthy and stained than the larger.

The struggling maiden gasped as she quickly glanced at the table through her struggles. The altar, however, wasn’t the frightening part. The seven objects under the cloth were the cause of fright.

The first object was a simple, unadorned wooden mallet, scarred and cracked from obvious use. The second, third, fourth and fifth objects were all the same, and all clearly used. They were a series of six-inch long stakes, cruelly barbed and made of rusted iron.

The sixth and seventh objects were knives.

The first knife was small, almost a paring knife, without any adornment apart from the stains she fervently hoped were rust. The second knife, however, was different.

Even in the dark red light, it shone with a malevolent illumination, a glow seemingly without source. It veritably pulsed with loathing and malice. A gleam of red from seemingly no source ran up the half-foot long blade, carved with mysterious runes and symbols with no meaning she could decipher.

“Treyinde Kulken Zaros Rexenmator! Julre…” The chant gradually lost its solemnity, becoming more akin to the fevered rantings of a madman, the lunacy of possession. The harsh grating sound of the Gate Priest’s un-dead voice was like the noise of a dry bone being crushed to dust.

As two of the gate Priests began fastening shackles ‘round her wrists and ankles, the woman gasped, eyes widening in pain. Her sanguine lifeblood began a small rivulet down her arms and legs, brought forth by the four,half- inch long spikes fastened to the inside of each shackle, designed to prevent struggle. The rivulet coursed down until it met with the small trickle from her now-deafened ears, the evil speech long since having broken her ear drums.

As her resistance began to be quelled by the pain, the two Gate priests that had shackled her suddenly grabbed her shoulders and forced her down hard, suprisingly powerful rotting sinew locking her to the wood-and-stone altar. The Gate Priest who wasn’t chanting grabbed the small knife, the wooden mallet and the stakes, setting them beside the immobile girl.

Though she couldn’t hear, her vocal cords were still very functional, and she began yelling, a cry for help and a plea for survival coming from the most primal of instincts— the need for self-preservation.

The only Priest not holding her down grabbed the smaller knife with a seemingly practiced motion, one rotting digit stretched down the blunt of the blade for control. Beginning at her navel, he began cutting into the silky smooth, perfectly flawless skin, seemingly entranced by the small yet rapidly widening gap left behind the blade in its travel up her stomach.

Her cry for help quickly turned into a screeching, throat-rending wail of unimaginable pain, echoing upon itself off of the stone walls, stemming from the pain of being dissected while conscious. Her cry then grew softer, not from lack of pain, but from the rapidity with which she was tearing her vocal cords.

The rivulet of crimson from her wrists and legs soon became overwhelmed by the trail of scarlet the blade of the Priest left behind.

The Priest reached his destination at the apex of her collarbone, then made quick incisions sideways below the collarbone, and then across left and right from her navel. Using his gangrenous hands, he pulled the pale skin now stained with her own blood down to the altar, an audible ripping sound from the tearing of her connective tissue drowned out by her screams. Using the mallet, the Priest rapidly hammered the spikes into the now-open flaps of skin, anchoring them down to prevent them impeding his work.

Using the mallet, he made a swift stroke onto her exposed sternum, cracking it deftly down the middle. Though mindless and inhuman, the Priest knew the final rite would not be complete unless this was done swiftly.

The rebirth of their Lord called for a LIVING heart.

“MUERTEMIUM MORTE EN ZAROS PACE DE BALLEREREN!!” The chanting grew to the point it was a scream, the hoarse cry of a condemned soul.

The crack of her breastbone marked a sudden ceasing of her screams. Her mouth was still open, her bloodshot eyes rolled back into her head but open as well, no sound issuing from her ruined throat. Merely a hoarse whisper, a mockery of a scream from torn vocal cords. Grabbing the heavily ornamented, evilly enchanted blade, the Priest made four quick incisions in the shape of a square slightly to the right of her cracked-open sternum. Reaching down deftly, the Priest pulled free the living cadaver’s still-beating heart, sanguine life streaming in crimson rivers from the torn arteries.

Nearly running, the Priest placed the heart from the now-forgotten body upon yet another altar, which then burst into virulent, black-soot belching flames.

“ZAROS EDE MORTE!”

The flames vanished. The heart was gone. The chanting abruptly halted. None of the priests noticed the glazed eyes of the once-pure vessel.

A small tremor shook the room. The priests quickly fell to the ground, kneeling. The altar with the corpse of the maiden began to shake, followed by the rest of the room. Dust from the ancient stones began to fall, and one of the coal braziers fell, scattering showers ofsparks. Suddenly, everything stopped, and a cold silence fell upon the room and the still-kneeling priests.

The body twitched, and one arm jerked.

The room began to quake violently, much harder than before, and a keening inhuman wail began issuing from the ruined mouth of the once-angel. The body began to convulse, violently, spikes driven deep through her flesh and into the wooden altar thrown out. One spike was driven through the hood of a priest’s robes, and the kneel turned into a slump.

The body began frothing at the mouth, red foam dripping down from the still-wailing corpse. The cadaver then lifted into the air, and her mouth began opening. Wider. And wider. And still wider. The crack of her now-broken jaws was lost in the harsh cry still issuing from the grotesque figure. Her gaping maw turned into the wet pinkness of her larnyx, followed down to her esophagus, and continued, farther down and farther, until the whole body was inside-out, bloody entrails hanging like some form of macabre confetti.

As suddenly as the body turned inside-out, the room snapped. The world ceased to exist and then was re-made just as instantaneously, except no girl could be seen. No corpse. No blood.

The room was clean once more, except it was not.

A figure floated, hovering malevolence. Raven-black hair darker than the jet of a tomb flowed serpent-like down past the crimson-spiked shoulders of a god. As the priests cowered in the first fear they’d felt in their not-lives, the hovering figure gently touched down onto the unstained, bejeweled altar. From the tip of his black steel and spiked leather boots to the emblem of hatred and sin emblazoned in stained blood upon his purple and red ankle-long overcoat, nothing but purest evil emanated from his body.

As his palely-skinned eyelids opened and his vermilion eyes shone, a single phrase burned from his mouth, twisting into a cruel sneer.

“I…have…returned.”