Therion – A Tavern Tale

“I’ve seen the devil, you know.” Astrid hesitated for just a second before continuing her busy work, wiping the bar with a cloth more out of habit than with any purpose, she tried not to change her expression at this admission.
“You have not.” She dropped the bait. This was one of her favourite parts of her job, after enough mead the townspeople here, paranoid and god-fearing, always had good stories to tell, and this early in the evening there was nothing Astrid needed to do but listen.
“I swear it. More than once.” For a second, Therion’s face appeared to grey.
“When?”
“The first time was when I was a little boy, I woke up in the middle of the night and immediately had the feeling that I was being watched. I pulled the covers up under my chin and watched in horror as a shadow in the corner turned and swirled into the shape of a woman. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I was just a boy but even now, as a man, I have never seen anyone more beautiful. The only thing that gave her away as unnatural was her height, she was much taller than an average person, she had to bow her head slightly to avoid the ceiling.
She had her hands together as if holding something precious, she came closer and held her hands out to me, opening them. Inside was a plain, iron key. The closer she came, the more the scent of burned roses filled my nose.
‘Take it — keep it close.’ She was smiling, and her voice trailed along with the whistling of the wind in the rafters and echoed into my bones. I reached out, and as soon as the key left her hand, she disappeared into the swirling darkness she arrived in. I tucked the key under my pillow and felt the deepest fatigue I’d ever felt. I don’t even remember settling back into my bed before the sunlight was upon me the next morning.
I kept the key with me at all times, I never went to bed without tucking it back under my pillow, and never left my bed without taking it with me. Every single morning I was surprised to see it still there, as if this had just been a long dream and one of these days I was going to wake up, find it absent, and that clarity that comes upon fully awakening would come, how silly I would feel to have believed it to be true.
I grew up in a town far from here, the second oldest of five, my father was a farmer and was very quick to temper. We walked upon egg shells every day and did what we were told, my siblings and I. One day, on the way back from the barn I tripped over a root, and time seemed to slow down as I watched the bucket of cow’s milk I had been holding fall to the ground, and begin soaking into the earth. Before I had the chance to register what was going on, I heard the booming voice of my father, still drunk from the night before as he grabbed my arm and dragged me towards the cellar. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his frenzied mutterings dripped with a hatred I had never felt before. I remember the pop of my shoulder dislocating, and being thrown down the six feet into the cellar before I blacked out.” Therion’s hand instinctively went to his shoulder, as if to make sure it was back where it was supposed to be.
“I woke up some time later to complete silence, kind of like this,” Therion chuckled and hesitated a moment before continuing. “Cracks of light from the house above me filtered down through the wooden floorboards. I heard no baby sister crying, or laughing. No younger brothers fighting in the living room. No murmurs of my mother and older sister worrying over recipes in the kitchen. No footsteps, no life.
I paced for a moment, quietly, afraid to disturb the silence, then I took a piece of my shirt in my teeth and with my good arm ripped a length of cloth to wrap my arm with. As I did so, I heard a clatter as the key from my pocket fell and hit a stone on the cold ground. I picked it up and without hesitation, used it on the cellar door, and pulled myself painfully into the sunlight. Everything looked perfectly normal outside, but I knew not to go into the house, I had heard my father’s roaring voice a hundred times, but that silence was the most terrifying sound. I walked to a neighbour, who was about a mile away.
I never asked what happened, I knew. I was never brought back to that house, and was sent here to live with my mother’s sister.” Therion paused, reached into the top of his shirt and produced a small iron key on a thin leather cord. “But I’ve kept this with me every single day since.”
The clanging of the bell above the door interrupted the spell cast over the two of them, and Therion quickly tucked the key back into his shirt, his face snapped into a smile and he cheerfully greeted the two men who entered. Astrid watched him don the mask and followed suit, wearing a smile of her own and acting as if the rug had not just been ripped out from under her. The three men talked about the weather, their work, their partners. More customers arrived, and soon the tavern was filled with familiar faces and the lilting of a lyre from the stage in the corner.
The next few times that Therion came to the tavern, he acted as if he’d never told Astrid the story of the devil and her key, now obviously visible under the fabric of every shirt he wore, but then, he hadn’t had as much to drink as he had on that evening.