Bedlam Unleashed: Eternity is Near
by Steven L. Shrewsbury & Peter Welmerink

Editor: Louise Bohmer
Publisher: Belfire Press
Pages: 59

E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-926912-59-2
Formats: html, js, mobi, epub, pdf, rtf, lrf, pdb, txt
Price: $0.99

Kindle ISBN-13: 978-1-926912-58-5
Price: $0.99

 

Available now at Smashwords, Kindle; coming soon to Diesel, Kobo & Nook.

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In this second installment of Bedlam Unleashed, Alanis and Erik travel to Rannoch Moor, where they take food and drink in a small village, and learn of an ancient witch who has conjured old spirits to haunt the clan that inhabit the area. Men, women, and children are going missing, while a bagpipe-playing ghoul haunts the wilderness, and ghosts haunt the wastelands of the moors.

From here, they head for the coast of England, looking to obtain passage home. After a brief time at sea, they end up in Leftwich, outside a castle, where they are attacked by strange winged beasts, then charmed by the deadly Haley Wenda. Kendrick the Wizard also joins the men on their journey.

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What they’re saying about Bedlam Unleashed: Eternity is Near:

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Excerpt:

“A hand here, Erik!”

Bedlam sat upon a rotting log several yards away, absently running his dirt-caked and calloused fingers across the curved edge of a farmers’ sickle. At his feet, a small wooden wine cask lay tipped on its side, uncorked but not spilling a drop. The contents were within him, swimming in his gut, veins, and damaged skull. His hair whipped about his head in the cool breeze of the overcast afternoon. Every now and again, the wild auburn strands parted to reveal the grisly wound on the right side of his skull, giving a glimpse of the rusty axe shard buried there. Foreboding eyes shadowed by his hairy brow, he stared out beyond the rolling Scottish countryside, stared southerly as a man entranced by the lure of a sultry woman. It wasn’t a woman though that the Norseman looked miles away upon, for he rambled and brooded, then made ready to weep before snapping into another tirade of insane brooding and cursing.

Erik stared with that second vision his damaged brain-sight lent his tortured senses. Stared into where darkness, demons, or dread things caroused and gibbered. Yet again, he could be spying some dismal specter of a woman. His betrothed who had died in our homeland so many miles away. I wondered if Erik, damaged though he might be, had recollections of his life before his grave injury, and if it was that which made him weep or seethe. It made me ache to see him in such a state.

Since the unsettling episode in the Nemeton, and my own visions of things past-turned-real, I thought much of revealing what I knew to my giant companion, to unleash the burden which gained weight upon my back. I wondered if I should tell him what I knew. At least the truths that wouldn’t get me killed. The jest I had made regarding his true love, during the bloody fight in Ireland to stoke Erik’s battle-fury, it haunted me now. I should tell him about his wife. A man should know the fate of their loved ones, should he not?

However, the present predicament needed attention first.

“Erik, my friend, assist me!”

“I hear your callings. I’m coming, milord.” Erik moved not a muscle and still stared far off.

Milord? The savage beast surely wasn’t talking to me.

Cursing, struggling, I sank lower in my vertical tomb.

“Strike the blindness from your eyes and help me, you stupid wine-addled mule.” A mouth of wet earth and vegetation sucked me deeper in.

Erik broke from his stupor with the frown of a bear, and rose to his feet. His broad shoulders brushed aside the limbs of a skeletal sapling. He adjusted the black girdle about his waist, which hung lopsided. The wide belt held a small, tied sack of bread and cheese, and a half-consumed wine bladder also. The food, drink, and farming utensil were all prior possessions of a poor old Highlander we had startled on the road yester-eve. At the towering Norseman’s back was the long sword he’d acquired three days ago from our Scottish friends—funny the sound of that rolling from my lips. He gripped the sickle in his meaty fist, fingers relaxing then tightening about its leather-wrapped wood hilt. His angry brow did not straighten as he gave me notice, and I sensed murky deeds in his movements.

The land trembled beneath his booted heels as he moved like a hulking nightmare towards me. I sucked in a breath, realizing foolhardiness in my sour words against such a colossal brute.

“I meant no harm,” I said, floundering, enveloped in the sucking bog in which, minutes ago, I had stepped and sank like a stone.

I drove my hands to my sides, trying to wrench free my weapons. I simply struggled against tangled root and sod. I feared many a time Bedlam would turn on me, drowned in drink or the fury of battle, seeing friend for foe or vice versa. In my current state, I was but a lone sheep stuck in the mire, with no defense against the approaching mammoth lion.

Bedlam stepped gingerly to a spot before me, tending to his stand on the marshy ground, spreading his feet far apart. He snapped back his thickly-muscled arm, the farmer’s sickle held high in hand nearly piercing the gloomy sky. His gaze settled on me and his seething sneer shown through his bristly beard.

“Erik!”

The arm and sickle dropped with blinding speed.

I winced, crying aloud, coughing and spitting out a mouthful of the wet ground-slop. Thankfully, I tasted none of my own guts.

With the fury of an enormous beast sweeping the ground, Erik hewed a great furrow in the soft earth before me. Wet soil and tortured vegetation flew in stringy masses to the left and right. I flung my arms back to keep my limbs from the heavy, cutting strokes.

“You bleat like a woman,” Erik said as his last swing drove the sickle deep and the instrument snapped, buried beneath the sloppy earth. “You would think you’re dreaming of Gunthar again, heh. Did I not tell you to walk the high bank?”

Without blinking an eye, Bedlam grabbed me by the pits of my arms and plucked me from my earthen tomb. I had to knot my toes in fear of loosing the only pair of boots I owned.