Chapter 2: The Grinding Maw

Chapter 2: The Grinding Maw

The sun bled across the horizon exactly as Savannah had promised, painting the humid sky in violent streaks of orange and purple. The gate to the Old Grounds was a crooked arch of rusted iron, choked with vines that looked like skeletal fingers. Beyond it, leaning tombstones jutted from the overgrown earth like a mouthful of broken teeth. The air, already thick with the island’s cloying perfume, was tainted here with something else: the smell of decay, damp soil, and that same faint, metallic sweetness David had noticed at Savannah’s hut, now much stronger.

Cassara’s hand rested on the hilt of her machete, her knuckles white. “This is a bad idea,” she murmured, her sharp eyes scanning the encroaching shadows. “Every instinct I have is telling me to run.”

“We’re here now,” David replied, his own voice tight. He clutched his Bible, the worn leather a flimsy comfort against the primal dread seeping from the cemetery. He was trying to frame this as a test, a trial by fire. But the part of him that still believed in a benevolent God was screaming that this place was profane, an open wound on the face of creation.

Savannah was waiting for them just inside the gate, a hunched silhouette against the dying light. She wasn’t carrying a picnic basket or a dinner service. Beside her, resting on a flat, moss-eaten crypt, was an antique cast-iron corn grinder. It was a bizarre, jarringly domestic object in this place of eternal rest. Rust flaked from its heavy body, but its handle and the grinding plates within seemed to gleam with a dark, unnatural polish.

“Welcome, my guests,” Savannah rasped, her unsettling grin a slash of white in the gloom. “The table is set.”

“What is that?” Cassara demanded, gesturing with her chin towards the grinder. “What kind of dinner requires a corn grinder?”

Savannah’s laugh was the dry rattle of bones. “A special kind. For a special guest.” She placed a frail, wrinkled hand on the machine’s cold iron. “My patron is old. Older than this island. Older than the bones that sleep beneath our feet. And its hunger… is profound.”

Before they could react, she began to chant, her voice dropping into a low, guttural cadence. The words were in no language David recognized, a string of harsh clicks and sibilant hisses that seemed to make the very air vibrate. As she chanted, the fine, pale dust that clung to her feet began to stir, not from any breeze, but as if answering her call.

Then, with a low groan of metal, the dust exploded from the maw of the corn grinder.

It wasn't smoke or fog. It was a thick, swirling cloud of gritty, yellowish particles that billowed outwards with astonishing speed, tasting of dry earth and ancient sorrow. It choked the air, swallowing the last of the light and plunging the world into a disorienting, claustrophobic haze.

“David!” Cassara’s shout was cut off, muffled by the sudden storm.

“Cassara!” he yelled back, but his voice was swallowed whole. He reached out, finding only the gritty, swirling nothingness. Panic, cold and sharp, pierced through his anxiety. They were separated. The world had shrunk to a few feet of churning dust in every direction. The ornate tombstones became looming, indistinct shapes, a maze with no walls and no exit.

He stumbled forward, one hand outstretched, the other gripping his Bible like a shield. The grinding noise started then. A low, rhythmic creak-screech, creak-screech, like rusted metal being forced to turn. It was the sound of the grinder, and it was coming from somewhere nearby in the fog.

He froze, straining to hear over the blood pounding in his ears. Through a momentary thinning of the dust, he saw it. A figure. It shimmered with a faint, ghostly luminescence, the translucent shape of a man in ragged clothes, his face a mask of eternal confusion. He was a spirit, an echo left behind in this unholy ground. Before David could even process the sight, a new horror emerged from the haze.

A monstrous, spectral head floated towards the ghost. It had no body, only a gaping maw filled with teeth like obsidian shards and long, black dreadlocks that dragged through the dust-covered grass. Its eyes were twin embers of burning yellow, radiating pure, insatiable hunger. Floating menacingly behind it, turning of its own accord, was the cast-iron corn grinder. Sinister black runes, invisible moments before, now glowed faintly on its rusted surface.

This was the patron. Congo-Savanne.

With a speed that defied its spectral nature, the head lunged. An invisible force, like a giant hand, seized the shimmering ghost. The spirit struggled silently, its form wavering and distorting as it was dragged inexorably towards the floating machine. David watched, paralyzed with a terror so profound it felt like his soul was freezing.

The monster shoved the ghost’s ethereal head into the grinder’s maw.

The grinding sound intensified, becoming a horrific, wet shriek of tearing metal and something else—a sound that wasn't physical, but spiritual. The handle of the grinder cranked down, and the ghost’s form was pulled into the machine. Its light was extinguished, its essence shredded, pulverized into a new, thicker cloud of the yellowish soul-dust that erupted from the grinder’s spout, feeding the swirling storm around them.

The monster had eaten a soul. And the dust… the dust was the remains. He was breathing in the pulverized remnants of the dead.

A guttural roar of satisfaction, a sound of pure, elemental hunger momentarily sated, echoed through the fog. Then, the burning yellow eyes of the disembodied head swiveled, piercing through the haze and locking directly onto David.

It was still hungry. He and Cassara were the main course.

Fear finally broke his paralysis. He scrambled backward, tripping over a half-buried headstone. “Cassara! Run!”

The grinding sound grew louder, closer. The monstrous head floated through the dust towards him, a predator that needed no eyes to see its prey.

Suddenly, a solid form slammed into his side. It was Cassara, her face pale but set in a grim, determined mask. She had her machete in hand, though she seemed to know it would be useless against this thing.

“Move!” she hissed, pulling him to his feet. “Now!”

They ran. Blindly, they plunged through the disorienting fog, the hungry roar and the relentless creak-screech of the grinding maw echoing behind them. Tombstones loomed out of the haze like jagged rocks in a storm-tossed sea. They tripped over exposed roots, their lungs burning from the dust and the exertion. The air was thick with the despair of a thousand consumed souls.

The grinding was right behind them now. David could feel a cold pressure building in the air, the invisible grip of the entity reaching for him. He braced for the end, for the feeling of his own spirit being torn from his body.

His foot caught on nothing.

The ground simply disappeared beneath him. He pitched forward with a cry of shock, his Bible flying from his grasp. Cassara, who had been holding his arm, was pulled down with him. They fell together into blackness, the roar of Congo-Savanne momentarily fading above them.

They landed hard, the impact jarring their bones. The world was a jumble of scraped skin, the overwhelming smell of rich, damp earth, and suffocating darkness. They had fallen several feet, landing on a soft, yielding surface of loose dirt.

Above them, the churning yellow dust cloud was a sickly ceiling, framed by the rectangular opening of an open grave. The guttural roar of the monster echoed from above, frustrated and enraged, but it did not follow.

For a breathless moment, they were safe. Trapped in a hole in the ground, but safe from the grinding maw. David pushed himself up, his hands sinking into the cool soil. His fingers brushed against something hard, smooth, and splintered.

Wood. Old, rotting wood.

They weren't just in an open grave. They had landed on the lid of a casket. And from the darkness at the far end of the narrow pit, a low, amused chuckle echoed, followed by the scrape of a match. A tiny flame flared to life, illuminating a face painted like a skull, and eyes that glowed with a faint, malevolent green light.