Taken In On The Lonely Cold Road

20250901

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

She looked the perfect picture of a shrine-tender; young and beautiful and clad in unadorned woollen robes. A welcome sight to a weary traveller such as myself. Her eager smile beckoned me inside the humble wooden building and I sighed with relief as she firmly shut those sturdy doors behind me and locked them tight against the rushing wind.
Granted, my gaze was blurred by exhaustion and the cold. But how did I not notice the way her eyes reflected the candle-light, as if holding an icy blue glow? Why did the paleness of her skin not stand out to me? How did I consider the stark crimson of her lips merely charming? Why did I not wonder at how she didn’t feel the cold in her simple dress?
I didn’t recognise the deity she prayed to over our meal. But there are a million and one small gods and local saints. I assumed her patron was yet another guardian of the lost.
Which may even be how she viewed them.
Normally I would have asked; I consider it manners to let my host wax lyrical on whatever topic pleases them, and I find the types who serve isolated shrines are eager both to praise their chosen god and hear news of the world beyond. But she did not prompt conversation, and in my tired stupor I took this for graciously not pushing me. So we ate in silence.
Sausage soup. I was pleasantly surprised at being served such a hearty dish in a small roadside shrine like this. I assumed she must have recently received a generous donation, and hoped she would not be disappointed that I had nothing of the sort to offer. I relished every sip.
Now, having seen that foul larder, knowing what flesh I eagerly spooned into my mouth… I fear I shall never be able to eat sausage again.
The room she showed me to was like every other I had slept in along the way. A small, bare cell with a narrow bunk and a small pewter basin of water. A tiny brazier kept the temperature tolerable, and once I added my own blanket to the bed it was cosy enough.
She sprinkled a pinch of incense onto the flame. To aid sleep, she said. It did make me feel drowsy, though it also itched my nose in a way I knew meant I’d wake with a stuffed head. So, once she had given me a final blessing and departed, I unshuttered the narrow window just long enough for the space to air out. Deciding it was better to shiver while the warmth returned than be roused at an intolerable hour by a sore and scratchy throat.
For all I have cursed my wayward sinuses, that night they saved my life.
Together with the habit of sleeping with a knife clasped tight under my pillow; while I felt no need to defend myself, trusting to the sanctity of my shelter, after so many years on the road I stir uneasy if my sleeping fingers do not find that reassurance. And it is harmless. So I settled myself as was my habit.
The cold woke me. Or perhaps it was something more sinister. But the cold was what my mind could grasp and pull me from sleep.
Only when I stirred, unthinkingly groping for the blankets with my free hand, did I realise something was on top of me. Then I finally felt the pain of claws digging into my flesh, teeth buried in my neck, and my hand jerked free from beneath the pillow to bury my knife into the monster feasting on my blood.
Its scream left my ears ringing and my stomach knotted. A foul, unearthly sound carrying more rage than injury.
But the monster jerked back, affording me precious space, and I continued stabbing in a panicked frenzy. Its claws raked my flesh, seeking my eyes, but in this dark space I had no need for vision and simply turned my head away.
That beast took half my ear, and left my face the mess you see. But the fact I had slept fully clothed against the cold helped protect me from her attacks. I was left sorely wounded, but alive.
I threw the monster’s limp, icy yet still-twitching body off my and dove for my pack. For candles, bandages, and my sword. I feared there were more of them. I assumed the shrine’s holy defences had been breeched, and my host had fallen to these attackers.
When the flame flickered to life what it illuminated chilled me to the core.
The gown was what I recognised first. Its plain, modest cut now marred by gaping cuts which showed the inhuman form underneath, and its snow-white fabric stained with the same purple clotting liquid which coated my arm and front.
I lifted my trembling fingers to my nose and sniffed. It smelt of blood. But it was the colour of flesh deathly seized by cold.
Unwilling to believe my eyes, I tended my wounds and set out, sword in hand, to check on my host. Of course I found no other soul.
But, in the unnaturally frigid tunnels I discovered behind her personal chamber, I found the remains of many travellers more unfortunate than I. Their heads had been lined up on carved wooden shelves, expressions locked in blissful sleep or anguished panic. Adorned with circlets of sinew and ice. Their bloodless, frozen flesh as pale as hers.
What had been done to the rest of their bodies… I cannot speak of it. Cannot do that horror justice. You must venture into that cursed place yourself to understand.
I confess without shame that I barely made it out before purging my innards of the blasphemous meal that monster tricked me into eating. But I fear I will never be clean again.
And even here, that wretched chill haunts me.

Prompt was “The gown was white. And the blood? Purple.”