Rickshift Inn

A chilling dark fantasy short story of guilt, demons, and terror at the eerie Rickshift Inn, where supernatural forces collide with haunted memories.

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I

The Rickshift Inn was a lonely establishment, built far enough away from anywhere to be just close enough for a stay. It was a building of rest, but more so a building of stories—of roads traveled.

This particular night saw a varied patronage due to the storm that raged just beyond thin wooden walls ready to collapse.

The night’s teller was an old man named Septim. His grey, almost white hair cascaded from his head and merged with a large beard. His eyes gleamed with the liveliness of a storyteller who knew he had his audience rapt. They were enthralled not just by his charismatic gesticulations but also by his age.

Septim was well into his seventies, and this mattered for two reasons: firstly, there weren't many people of that generation who remained, and secondly, only they could give a firsthand account of The War.

"And so there we were," Septim said. "Wet, cold, hungry, and lost in the woods somewhere, but that wasn't the worst of it. We found that nothing we did could warm us, for you see," he paused to cultivate the tension, "our fire had begun to burn cold." Lightning flashed, and thunder shook the inn as if on cue.

Paul, the innkeeper, set down the glasses he had been wiping behind the bar and focused on the old man. He had never experienced a cold fire, but he knew what it meant.

"Demons," Allen said what they were all thinking. He was a regular—a wandering bard who often walked the stretch of lonely road the inn was on. He was young and usually pink-cheeked but now was pale as ivory.

"Yes," Septim said with a grave stroke of his beard. "There were demons."

"Bah!" Rand roared. He was a chubby, self-proclaimed man of science who sat like a king warming his feet by the fireplace. "Cold fire? Bah! What shite!"

"It's true!" Allen said. "A violet flame with an icy feel makes for a running soldier with demons at his heel," he recited the old rhyme.

"Bah, I said!"

"Do you mean to say," the merchant Oswald said in a posh accent, "that demons aren't real?" He was dressed in a fine fur coat and, like Rand, sat like a king. But where Rand was nobility's prickly backside, Oswald was its silk sheets.

"What people call demons, my merchant friend," Rand started, "are nothing more than beasts yet to be classified by science. And these 'Drae Lords,'" his voice dripped with derision, "are nothing more than fantasy—fever dreams conjured by the traumatized minds of soldiers." He looked to Septim.

"What of the accounts?" Allen argued. "All soldiers who fought in the war speak of cold flames! They can't all be wrong!"

"Easily explained, boy. That's nothing more than a strategy—a scare tactic. Magicians would trick the senses, making fires seem cold and discolored, fooling the weak-minded. This too has been accounted for and admitted by surviving members of the opposing forces, and as I'm sure we'll see from Sir Septim's story, it worked."

"I pray," Septim said, stroking his beard, "that you are never proven wrong."

Paul rubbed an ache in his knee. Then a pounding at the door brought them all to silence.

"What in blazes was that?" Rand bellowed.

"The door," Allen said. "There's someone at the door."

"In this weather? I say, who would be about in a storm like this?" Oswald remarked.

"Someone the storm caught by surprise?" Allen said.

"Nonsense, my boy. Any traveler with a lick of sense would have seen it coming and either stayed in town or arrived here far earlier," Oswald said.

The door rattled again, and Paul dashed from behind the bar to lift the wooden plank barricade, letting in the tempest’s full fury, outing every candle as a beast of a man in soldier’s garb came stumbling in before falling to the floor, shivering like a wet rat.

"Someone help me with this!" Paul said to no one in particular as he fought against the winds to put the door back into place. Allen rose quickly and replaced the wooden plank.

With the storm held back, all attention turned to the stranger as Allen fell to his knees to help him up.

Rand peered from his seat by the fireplace. "What would possess a man to be out in this?"

Oswald made a round relighting the outed candles. "I must say, I'm interested as well, but the man seems to be in no condition to speak."

The stranger shook and murmured. His face was pale, and his eyes hollow. He said one discernible word: "Demon."

---

II

The stranger seemed better after a few minutes, a blanket, and a steaming bowl of stew. He sat and stared at the steam rising from the bowl cupped in his two large hands. With time, he grew malleable, even offering his name, which was Ed. Of course, the patrons of Rickshift Inn wanted more than his name.

Ed gazed at them. He was large, with a scar that twisted from his buzz-cut hair down his cheek—clearly no stranger to hard times, which only raised the question: what in damnation had this man on the brink of tears?

They waited until he finished his stew.

"Ed, was it?" Oswald spoke first. "It is clear that you have suffered a trauma, but, and I think we can all agree, it is in our best interests to know what is out there that would make a soldier such as yourself brave this sort of weather."

Ed ignored the question and turned to Septim. "Old man," he said, "what do you know of demons?" His voice was low and grated the air.

"Like what?" Septim was calm, almost knowing.

"What can kill them?"

Septim smirked as he reached into his coat. "Silver," he said, "or pure iron through the heart." He pulled a dull metal rod with a pointed tip from his coat. It was about the length from the tip of his middle finger to his wrist.

"Are you telling us to expect a visit?" Oswald mused. "Funny, we were just speaking of such patrons—or rather, the legitimacy of their existence." He glanced at Rand, who waved a dismissive hand and turned back to the fire.

"They exist," Ed said. "They bloody exist."

Everyone positioned themselves to listen. Even Rand seemed to cock his ear. It took a moment for Ed to speak.

"We was hunting witches," he said. "It was our orders. We was just following orders."

"How long now?" Ed asked, scratching at a thousand mosquito bites as he looked towards the horizon, where lightning flashed in a distant grey sky.

"Hell if I know," his friend, Decks, answered.

"Break’s over!" the squad leader roared. "Let's move!"

Decks flexed his thick neck and relaxed when it popped.

The squad stumbled through the marsh, cursing every step. The air was stagnant and rotten. Mud and grime seeped through their boots and into their skin, and the heat wasn’t baking—it was just present. Present in the air, present in the waters, present in their bones. It made Ed icky with sweat, and so he anticipated the approaching storm. A good storm always cleansed.

"I swear, when I get my hands on that witch, I’m gonna wring her neck for putting me through this," Ed said through gritted teeth.

"If there even is a witch," Decks said.

Ed blinked. "I swear, if we don’t find a witch, I’m gonna wring the squad leader’s neck for putting me through this."

The squad leader called for silence. The party stopped and listened. At first, all they heard was the buzzing of mosquitoes, but slowly, it carried through. A song—a lullaby echoing through the marsh. The rising melody seemed too perfect to be human, carrying too clearly. Ed heard it not in the air, he realized, but in his own head. He readied his crossbow.

They moved through the marsh slowly, each man accounting for another. The squad leader stopped them with a hand signal. They peered ahead to see a young girl in the marsh stomping in the mud as she sang her tune. Her dark, curly hair bobbed with every hop, and her tunic flowed whimsically. She was in her own little world until she turned to the squad and froze.

"Hey there," the squad leader said as gently as possible. "You think you can help us?"

The girl hesitated to answer but didn’t deny him.

"We’re looking for a mean ol’ witch. Have you seen one around?"

The girl's eyes widened, and she broke into a sprint.

"Shite!" the squad leader roared as he gave chase. The squad followed clumsily.

"I smell something sweet," Decks said after a short run. "Like oats."

They came upon a clearing just in time to see the little girl run into a cottage. With a signal, the squad leader called for readied crossbows.

"Leave Gran-gran alone!" the girl shrieked, unseen.

"Come out easy, girl," said the squad leader. "We only want the witch!"

"Go away, or Cole’s gonna gobble you!"

"Who in ten fucks is Cole?" Ed asked. Decks shrugged.

The squad leader gave the signal for 'raze.' "You got till the count of five!"

The squad followed the order, save for Ed.

"One!"

"Whoa!" Ed said. "He can’t be serious."

Decks readied his torch with a grave sense of duty.

"Two!"

"Oi! Chief, that's a li’l girl in there," Ed said.

"That’s a witch’s girl, Ed," Decks said.

"Three!"

"But ya ain’t even sure a witch is in there!"

"Four!"

"Hang on!"

"Time’s up!" the squad leader roared. Then torches sailed through the air, and the thatch-roofed cottage went up in flames. All they heard were the girl’s shrill screams.

"Cole!" she screamed helplessly. "Gran-gran! I love you too!" In time, a young, girl-sized figure of fire stumbled out of the cottage before falling to the dirt. The image of her charred and burning body seared itself into Ed’s mind.

"I can still hear her," Ed said. They sat in rapt attention. Candlelight flickered, and Ed's eyes reflected them like mirrors.

Paul looked out the window. He couldn’t stand to look at the soldier nor his guilty expression. Doing nothing is just as bad, he thought. The howling storm worsened as Paul rubbed the deepening ache in his knee.

"Soldier’s duty," Septim said. "A fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. A fate reserved for our sons. You are not the first young soldier to betray himself to orders, nor will you be the last. Please, Ed, continue."

---

III

That night, they sat around a fire. Ed's eyes reflected the open flames, screams echoing in his ears.

"We're soldiers," Decks said, shuffling a deck of cards. "We follow orders."

Ed said nothing as he moved closer to the flame, then a chill made him shiver.

"The days are too hot, and the nights freeze my ass off," Decks said as he moved closer too. He stopped. Ed was still cold, and the fire, to his confusion, didn’t help. The wild flame grew calm, flowing rather than flickering, darkening to a dim purple as a drop of rain smacked Ed’s forehead.

Decks jumped to his feet. "A violet flame," he said.

Ed stared into the flame. He knew the old child's rhyme.

"An icy feel—"

Ed looked up at his friend, and in a flash of lightning, he was gone. Ed jumped. "By the divines—"

Another flash, and the squad leader's head was replaced by a red spray. A flash, and another vanished. A flash, and the last screamed a shrill scream. Ed fell to his knees.

"Divines, I pray to thee," Ed muttered. "From this evil deliver me. I shall—”

"They're not listening."

The voice was like rusty metal. The downpour came, and then a tall figure stepped into the violet light. His eyes were as black as tar, his mouth peeling into a grin of needles.

"They turn a blind eye when I'm about," the figure said. Then the demon whispered, “Run.”

"That," Rand said, "is a load of shit."

Oswald grimaced. "I say, some tact is called for."

"Tact? Bah! Why, I say—"

Rand's sudden scream pierced the room as he leapt out of his seat. They all gaped at him.

"What was that about?" Allen squeaked.

"M-m-m-my feet got cold," Rand said.

The inn darkened as all fires dimmed to a violet burn. Paul’s breath frosted, the inn took on a deathly chill, the storm silenced, and three knocks came from within.

They all rose and turned towards the back to see a man where there hadn't been one before, sitting like a king, wearing a wide-brimmed hat like a crown.

"I'm looking for a soldier," his voice was like rusty metal.

Everyone took a wide step away from Ed.

The figure rose. Septim pulled the iron rod from his coat and immediately dropped it as though it had bitten him, gaping as it thrashed on the ground.

The figure stepped toward Ed with a nasty, needled grin.

Ed fell to his knees. "Please," he begged. "I was just following—"

In a flash, they were gone, and the tempest blew in, snuffing out the candles.

Paul dashed for the door, and Allen helped him with the plank. They both ignored the bloody marks on the edges of the doorframe.

Oswald made a round, shakily relighting the snuffed candles. "Scientist," he spoke with a quake in his voice, "perhaps you could explain what just occurred? If demons aren’t real—"

"Hush!" Rand interjected. "I—I was only ruminating." He shivered as he took his seat by the fireplace.

Septim joined him, gazing absently at the iron rod in his hand.

Allen hummed a broken tune.

Paul wiped empty glasses by the bar, thankful that no one was telling any more stories. The Rickshift Inn was a building of stories, but for tonight, it had had enough of those.

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—B. H. Schafer