A long time ago on a night between Christmas and New Year’s, a baby boy was born. With a touch of blonde hair and rosy red cheeks he was the apple of his mother’s eye. Within a few days her baby boy had come down with the fever that had ravaged the entire village. The new mother wrapped her baby in as many blankets as she could find and hugged him tightly to her chest. To her despair, shivers continue to rake his body and day by day his condition deteriorated.
Eventually the cries began to slow and shivers became fewer as Death hovered above the newborn. With his hooded cloak and seemingly endless inkwell eyes, he crouched in the corner like a vulture waiting for its next meal. Counting down the last remaining heartbeats until he could claim his next victim. As the baby drew in his final breath, the hooded figure launched itself at the infant sucking his innocent soul right out of the tiny body. Too soon however, the greedy savage devoured its meal. So soon in fact that the baby was not actually dead.
The mother, overtaken by grief, cradled the baby tightly to her chest preventing Death from completely overtaking the soul of her most precious son. In response, the spirit ripped the child out of her arms and carried him out of the cottage and into the night. Acting purely on instinct and adrenaline, the mother took off after her baby son. Not wasting precious seconds searching for the hooded spirit, instead she followed the blackened trail left in the wake of Death. Stalking Death like a predator stalks its prey, the mother followed the trail around twists and turns, up hills and into valleys, through caves and dens until the tracks ended abruptly at what appeared to be a tree split by lightning.
Peering cautiously down the tree trunk, the woman noticed a well-worn path that appeared to lead to an underground cavern. In the absence of fear the mother slid down the hole onto to the path that led farther into the Earth than any other alive human being had ever been before.
Within a few moments she was sprinting again, but this time with a new sense of urgency. She could feel the presence of her son, the gnawing ache at her heart only grew stronger the deeper she travelled underground. At the end of the hallway the walls grew wider apart as the terrified mother entered what appeared to be a lair.
The lair was darker than the surrounding rooms with bloody red wallpaper and the walls lined with skulls. With a sickening pit in her stomach, the woman entered the room knowing THIS was the room where she would find her son, dead or alive. Along the back of the cavern were Death and his messengers all carrying little babies in their arms. In the arms of Death himself was the sleeping newborn child of the distraught mother.
In a moment of agony and despair the desperate mother emitted a shriek so guttural and feral it was unknown to man. The strength of the scream forced Death against the wall and the baby fell to the ground and began to cry. A footrace broke out between the spirits and the woman, all of which lunged at the baby. It appeared as if the woman might win when Death released a putrid black rope of thorns in attempt to kill the baby once and for all. In a valiant act the mother dove in front of her son driving a wall between the deadly rope and her baby, saving his life. However, the thorns pierced through the mother’s heart killing her, and leaving her shredded corpse limp on the ground. The newly orphaned infant lay on the ground encased in a shield made solely of mother’s love where he remained unharmed until he was returned to Earth.