by Mink, Jason
After dinner, Ashton presented the group with a beautiful seven-stemmed hookah. "I think you'll like this," he said, grinning. "It belonged to my grandfather. Picked it up in Sri Lanka on one of his adventures." He opened a small circular tin and tapped a generous quantity of a darkish, floral-smelling substance into the wide bowl.
"Is this… Paq'qa?" Annie asked, surprised. Ashton shook his head.
"No, not at all. This is black hashish mixed with tobacco, honey and dried grape extract. It's a mild but pleasant high, perfect for after dinner enjoyment." He centered the jade hookah upon the table. "Gather 'round, children."
Ashton lit a long wooden match. Letting the sulfur burn off, he touched the dancing edge of the flame to the bowl's center. As one the group drew through their tubes and the fire caught in a slow cherry-hued spread. Ashton was right. It was mild, pleasant tasting, the sort of thing they had once enjoyed. Baxter realized that, in spite of all they had seen, despite all they had been through together, they were still strangers to one another. Every one of them had changed, had been changed by what had happened. Carefully-created personal facades crumbled in the face of the summer's experiences. No one laughed or joked now; Zak did not drum and the women did not dance. Only Ashton still smiled.
After forty-five minutes of uneasy conversation Ashton made a big show of opening a dusty wooden box. Within were a number of odd objects: a tiny astrolabe, a grouping of oddly-angled, mirror-plated metal planes, a brass bell, as well as various pouches, phials and enamel cases. He removed a bone-colored scroll case and twisted its end off with a hollow POP! A tightly-bound piece of parchment slid out.
"This is the last ritual ever written by Clautney Iris." He slipped the binding from it and carefully unfurled the scroll. "It was left in my grandfather's care, along with Iris' instruments and personal papers. It is this scroll which brings us together. Tonight we read this ritual. It shall re-unify our circle, return resolve and strength to our humble group." In what would seem an impossible act for him otherwise, Ashton grew wistful. "Summer is almost over. Time to go soon. I don't want us to part on such a sour note. I'm sure this beautiful ceremony will help us overcome our anger and resentment towards one another, pave the way for happier goodbyes." He stood up. "Well?"
Chloe stood up. "Yes."
Annie and Zak did in tandem. "Yes."
Erica nodded in affirmation. "Yeah, I'm in."
Baxter rose from his place at the table. For a moment he considered simply leaving the room, but the unspoken pressure to comply with the group will seemed to overwhelm him. He opened his mouth to speak, but Ashton had already moved on to Adam, who remained seated.
"Brother?" Ashton asked, surprised.
Adam glared at him. "I don't know why I should bother. I'm not getting anything out of this anymore; I don't share anything with you people other than air."
Ashton bristled at this. "You have an obligation. You accepted this position in the group; you took the blade, were made Knight of our Sacred Circle. You would stop, after we have come so far, after we have waited so long?"
Adam looked down at his empty glass. "Yeah, well, now I'm the one saying no."
"DAMN YOU!" Ashton roared. In the blink of an eye he was on the bigger man, hands twisting his collar. "GET UP! GET UP!"
Adam was jerked to his feet. His collar ripped in the process, sending him off-balance. Ashton pressed his advantage, grabbing Adam by his beard.
"Son of a bitch!" Adam cried. He made a fist but was unwilling to punch his attacker.
"Hit me!" Ashton bellowed, thrashing him. "Come on, you whiny little child! Hit me!"
But Adam could not, choosing instead to ward off Ashton's blows. Disgusted, Ashton ceased his assault.
"Get out," Ashton said bitterly. "You have failed us. And you have failed Him."
Adam staggered to his feet and limped away, beaten. Ashton dropped into his chair and covered his eyes. Out of the seven, Adam was the last he thought would betray him. But wasn't that always the way?
~*~
The rain came after midnight, in the form of intermittent but violent storms. It suited the room's temperament, with Ashton angrily stalking off, Chloe in tow. Zak went upstairs with Annie but came back shortly after, to find Baxter and Erica opening one of the priceless bottles of wine.
"Hey, Zak. Want a glass? All I could find was this old stuff but I'm sure it'll give ya a buzz."
Zak took the bottle. "Holy shit. 1889?"
Baxter nodded. "Yeah, it's the only thing on the damn label I can read. But what the hell. Tonight is kinda special." He set the bottle aside to breathe. "So, I didn't see that coming," he said after a moment. "Our boy Adam finally lost it."
Zak rested his chin on his folded hands. "So it seems." After a moment he added: "I'm surprised he was the one."
Erica arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
Zak shrugged. "I just thought it would have been someone else, that's all."
It was clear to Baxter that Erica thought Zak was speaking of her, when in reality he was talking about himself.
"It could have been any one of us," Baxter said to close the matter. "I know we've all thought about bailing at one point or another. But it is odd it would be Adam. He was always so gung-ho about the whole thing. Anyway, I guess that's it. There's gotta be seven."
Erica smiled. "Maybe Metathias can fill in for him?"
Baxter chuckled darkly.
The music ended then and Zak rose. Erica caught his arm, drawing him back to his seat. "So do you remember Mr. Shea?" Erica asked him.
"Of course."
Erica looked over to Baxter, who could only shrug; the cat was out of the bag now. "We went to see him. He warned us not to do this. Told us… well, he told us a lot." She gave him a quick but surprisingly thorough synopsis of what Shea had told them three night's past.
Zak listened intently until she was finished. "Well, in a sense he's right."
Erica looked at him curiously. "Well, yeah. So…"
"But I don't think making more people aware of Paq'q is such a bad thing. It… I mean, He's not tangible in the sense of you or I. He's a ideal, an archetype. To embrace Him is to embrace the ideal of conscious evolution, to accept that we as humans have an obligation to change and evolve into something greater than we currently are. I don't think it's meant to be thought of in such a literal fashion."
Baxter opened his mouth to disagree but Erica beat him to it. "You're so sure of that? After all that's happened to us? After what's happened to your girlfriend?"
Zak chaffed under this. "She's not my girlfriend…"
"All right, whatever. That's not the point. You've seen what happened to Annie under His influence. You saw what happened to Adam when He reached into the light at the center of the circle. Those physical transformations aren't exactly healthy-looking."
Zak thought hard about this. "Change is painful," he said finally. To this Erica shook her head, unable to reply. Meanwhile Baxter was attending the bottle of wine. He poured Erica a glass, then one for Zak and finally one for himself. "Cheers."
Erica looked at her friends and smiled sadly. "So I guess this is it. I'm going home tomorrow. There's no reason to stay any longer. It's obviously meant to end here."
Zak nodded, but Baxter could not. His throat had gone dry at the thought of leaving so abruptly. He could not go back now; he could not face the world in this shape. He watched Erica as she left, turning to give them one final wave.
NOW
He was down. Baxter tried to rise and found he could not. His legs had completely separated, splitting up through his perineum. Every time he shifted, agonizing pain lanced through the entirety of his body, left him unmoving at the bottom of the hill. It was dawn now, his second morning outside. Gray light had led him through the stand of trees above, a beacon he'd welcomed as a friend. He'd followed blindly, not watching his footing and had toppled down the steep hillside. As he lay at the bottom he considered his fingers. The tips had dried and burs
t, spilling seed-white fuzz from their ends. All of the nails had gone. They'd begun to ache as he walked and he'd started to pick at them, finding once he'd begun he was unable to stop himself. It hardly mattered now. Nothing did except the fact he could no longer move.
No. He could no longer walk. But he could crawl. Baxter began to drag himself forward, using the now-exposed ends of his elbows as claws. It hurt like hell but no less than just lying there. Again and again he threw his arms ahead of him, pulling the wasted husk of his body along behind. He knew he could… not…
Stop?
Looking back to measure his progress he found he'd only gone about ten feet. But he'd surely been crawling for hours. Not fair. Not fair. He beat his fist into the shifting earth, lay his head down in the cool furrow. It felt so good... to lay down... in the dirt.
He would
just
lay down for
a minute…
~*~
Baxter opened his eyes. The leaves were lovely, an ever-changing patchwork pattern falling across the cool earth. They held him as he fell again and again, always there with their wonderful warmth and color. Already they covered him, making him another indistinct shape upon the forest floor. Baxter forced himself to roll onto his back, so that he could see them fall. Something split inside him as he did but he paid it no mind. It would be filled soon enough, with an abundance of orange and gold and red. There were more than enough leaves to fix him. He watched as they tumbled down, spinning, twirling, sweeping back and forth in slow, graceful arcs. Each flight was perfect, unique unto itself. And why not? After all, it was what they'd been waiting for all along; the final act, the end of the performance, their own bow before the passing season. Each leaf had its moment, its one chance to fall. Had to make it a good one. Had he made it a good one, Baxter wondered? Had anyone applauded his fall? Unlikely. He was expected to fall, it was a given. He would fall and it would not matter and no one would ever seem him again.
" ...no…"
Yes. That was how it would be.
"No."
Baxter rolled over and threw his right arm forward, his elbow cleaving the leaves. He pulled himself towards it, then repeated the action with his left arm. Crawl. He could still crawl. He could still...
"Fight, boy. You can fight."
Baxter followed the sound of the familiar voice, dragging himself towards the shadowy mass looming above him. He opened his mouth to speak but his tongue had jellified into an immovable clot. He could only stare as a pair of large, calloused hands reached down and lifted him from the forest floor.
"Fight!"
NINETEEN
Four days had passed since the Great Ritual. In that time the manor had become a hellish place, beyond anyone's capacity to imagine. Paq'q's presence filled the space entirely now, changing all He came into contact with. Whether living or inert, Paq'q had His way with it, exploring it as a blind man suddenly granted vision might; hungrily, voraciously going over every pore, trying to discover its purpose before exploding it with potentiality. Every painting was transformed in a similar manner, first taking on a textured, almost three dimensional appearance; its most subtle qualities were brought to the fore before being irrevocably distorted, bloating out of proportion until bursting open and spilling countless spores into the air. Wherever they settled, the spores in turn spread the colors, textures and patterns of the paintings that had been absorbed, more by instinct than art. The statuary grew more and more detailed, in time becoming so defined that nothing was left but clotted powder. The taxidermied animals took on a startlingly life-like appearance, their dried-up fur once again growing soft and supple before the bodies puffed out and fell to pieces. All that remained were the eyes, which flashed with life despite being glass.
The manor itself transformed. The once-sturdy planks beneath their feet grew soft, pliable, bowing as if still green. In turn the rooms took on a subtly concave quality, an ambiguous inward pull now asserting itself. This effect was not limited to the floor; in the space of three days all of the wood in the building had distorted, growing warped and deformed. Inch-thick mahogany panels set into the walls were affected, running as wax would towards the source of a flame. This created striking optical illusions and lapses in spatial perception, especially up in the shadowy corners. Near and far surfaces seemed to fluctuate, reversing in depth to such an extent as to make them appear to point outwards, not in. It was this suggestion of negative space as positive that was truly disquieting, the other side of Reality quietly revealed. These bizarre effects were not simply confined to the wood. One only needed to blink and the manor's velvet-flocked wallpaper would begin to whirl in impossibly intricate fractal-like designs, so beautiful it seemed impossible to look away. One could watch for hours, entranced by the ever-changing tapestry without ever even realizing it. This in itself was pure sustenance to Paq'q: blind, yet focused intent. He fed on their every thought, prodding them when they grew sluggish, spurring them on to greater realms of imagination. The problem was, He was using them up.
No one was dreaming, and as such no one was truly resting. Paq'q found He had to extend his mind further to find all He needed, venturing on mental tendrils into the town of Tull. The people there were dull, disengaged even before they fell under His thrall. They dreamed little here, their capacity for imagination limited by the isolated lives they led. Still, there were a few whose potential He could develop. The rest He just let go mad.
Annie was well on her way. Ashton would not let her leave with Sandy as promised, now insisting they stay for what he called "The Great Awakening." This drove the poor woman to the edge, with only the needs of her child to keep her from going over. Erica did what she could to support the two of them, but she was quickly running down. Her body ached in a very strange way, one which left her weak and fearful. Was it about to betray her the way Zak's body had? He'd not been able to walk since he'd fallen days previous. The loss of his new-found mobility had crushed his spirit, leaving him sulking alone in the shadowy library. The music which had dogged him off and on for the past seven years was now a constant, mocking to those who to tried and cheer him. It was loud, insistent in its bid to draw one's attention, the same little tune looping over and over and over again.
Ashton was growing ratty at the ends as well, his enthusiasm gone hollow. Still, this was what his family had been working towards for decades, so he carried out his duties to the best of his waning abilities. He continued to perform little rituals in the cavern with Adam and Chloe, marking the rapid progress of His new form. It had doubled in that time, growing to nearly half the size of the chamber. Massive root-bundles had unfurled, rolling out and up into the caves, anchoring deep into the earth. Only two or three more days now. The time was nearly upon them.
~*~
The whitish, waxen mass melted into the floor was once a human being. Featureless and indistinct, it was skinless, hairless, looking more like a dollop of old lard than anything else. This was all that was left of the man called Baxter Knowles. It had only just stopped moving, the will which had driven it far past death at last ebbing out.
An uncannily-swift hand was there to catch the scrap of soul stuff as it floated free of the now-inert mass, sweeping it into a squat, smoked-glass bell jar. This jar was placed in the center of a circle made up of seven ivory candles; a small dish of water was then set upon the jar's tin lid. Into this dish a single droplet of blood was spilled. The man who performed these actions did so as quickly as possible, holding a fixed idea in his mind. Speaking in a language long dead he swirled the water about with quiet intent. Achieving the reaction he wished, he set the dish aside. Taking an ordinary steak-knife he punched a hole in the lid of the jar and worked it into a small opening, then carefully pored the liquid from the dish into the glass vessel.
When finished the man closed the hole with a plug of colorless wax and waited. Initially nothing much happened, the mixture merely coagulating at the bottom of the jar. After about twenty minutes sma
ll bubbles began to form and burst. Within the space of an hour the volume of the fluid in the jar had increased by half; after four hours the jar was nearly full, the once-clear liquid now thick and undeniably blood-like. Satisfied by this the man began to sculpt the waxen mass on the hardwood floor into a rough bowl-like shape. Into this he slowly poured half of the liquid, all the while muttering a string of dense, unpronounceable syllables. A sudden wind blew through the room though the windows were closed, extinguishing all candles but one. Unmindful of this, the man began to chant, drawing a series of complex geometric sigils in the air with his right hand above the remains. When he reached the end of the cycle he then repeated his right hand's actions with his left, only in the opposite direction.
A viscous guttering began at the bowl's center, the liquid absorbing into the waxen mass. A wet heat could be felt radiating from its softening surface and with his free hand the man quickly poured the remainder of the fluid into its widening aperture. The heat doubled and re-doubled, quickly growing uncomfortable. Heedless of this the man continued to chant, one hand now mirroring the other's gestures. The edges of something began to shimmer in the air above, a thing by its very nature undefined. Averting his eyes out of need as much as reverence, the man chanted louder, increasing the speed and intensity of his gesticulations. The wind picked up, making the remaining candle-flame flicker and dance wildly. By its light the contents of the bowl boiled, great sloppy bubbles of gore popping to spray his face and hands. A rank odor slowly filled the room, the sickly stench of the slaughterhouse. There was pain in its stink, fear and anger and dread. The sensations it brought were nearly unbearable, the primal index of human emotion lain bare before him. He fought to maintain a sense of himself beneath the surging onslaught, worked desperately at maintaining the complex web of interlocking geometrical gestures.