Devil's Creek

by Todd Keisling

  Stephanie put her hand on Tyler’s. “Tell us what happened.”

  His nostrils tingled from the scent of burning incense. Imogene wandered around the basement, waving the smoking bundle of dried sage in each of the corners. Tyler finished lighting the candles, careful not to disturb their placement, as Imogene consulted her notes to ensure the correct configuration. When they were finished, they stepped back and surveyed their work.

  A series of runes filled in the three circles they’d drawn on the floor and wall, surrounded by the candles he’d lit. A ring of salt surrounded the circle of body, in the center of which sat a mound of earth and nightcrawlers. Sticks of incense burned around the open can to ward off the acrid stench. She’d placed the idol in the center of the mound to serve as a crude representation of the dark thing dwelling in the earth below Calvary Hill. Its eyes cast a pale blue glow about the room.

  On the wall, a dripping border of dark red paint surrounded the chalk circle representing the soul. Tyler thought about asking what the paint was supposed to represent, but decided he’d rather not know.

  The final circle was of mind, positioned on the floor closest to the wall, between the circles of body and soul. The four cleansing runes marked the four corners of the circle.

  “Where’s the tequila?”

  He reached in the bag and retrieved the bottle of amber liquid, purchased from the bottom shelf of the local liquor store. Imogene took it, examined the label, and unscrewed the cap. She drank.

  Tyler snorted in confusion. “It’s not for the ritual?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, grimacing at the awful taste burning its way down her throat. “It’s for my nerves. I don’t know how this is going to go. Want some?”

  He was repulsed by the notion—tequila never treated him well—but after a cursory glance of the odd symbols on the floor, he thought better of it and took the bottle. The cheap liquor tasted every bit of its price, numbing his tongue and lighting a fire in his gut, and he regretted the drink immediately. Imogene laughed at his expression, taking the bottle from him and imbibing once more.

  “What’s a classy lady like you drinkin’ swill like that?”

  “I have my moments, Professor Booth.” She flashed him a smile, capped the bottle, and turned toward the configuration. “I guess I should get to work, huh?”

  A dry lump found its way into his throat. He wanted to tell her no, to repeat the many reasons why he didn’t want her to go through with this, but seeing the conviction in her eye reaffirmed the answer he already knew she’d give. Whether he argued or pleaded, the outcome would be the same; instead, he chose to spend their last moments in an embrace, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. He kissed the top of her head, breathing in the sweet smell of her hair one last time.

  “I love you, Genie. I hope you know that.”

  “I do,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted.”

  It’s okay, he wanted to tell her, but the words didn’t feel right. It wasn’t okay. He would never be okay with it—but he wouldn’t ruin this for her and make it harder than it already was.

  She took a step back from him, gave him a once-over, and put her hand on his cheek. “I’ve enjoyed these years with you, old man.”

  “Me too.” Tears slipped from his eyes. No sense in trying to hide them. Imogene wiped his cheek with her thumb and smiled.

  “Chuck’s taken care of my affairs. You remember what I asked you to do?”

  He did, and even if he didn’t agree with leaving her research for Jackie to find, he would honor her wishes. “When it’s over,” Tyler said, “I’ll return the idol and lock it up in your desk. Then I’ll call Chuck.”

  Imogene nodded. “He’ll take care of the rest.” She stepped toward the circle of mind and began to undress, revealing a series of dark tattoos along her shoulders and down the ridge of her spine. They were the same cleansing runes decorating the floor, marking the corners of her circle, and would soon decorate her gravestone.

  Tyler tried not to stare but found he couldn’t look away. Even with her imperfections, the wrinkles, sagging flesh, and darkened spots of age, she was beautiful in his eyes. She tied her long silver hair back in a bun and offered him a coy smile. Twenty years ago, the look would’ve set him on fire. Even now, it set his heart ablaze, but this old machine was nearly out of gas.

  “When I step into this circle,” she said, “I won’t be able to leave. The boundary will be sealed. No matter what happens, do not try to pull me out of this circle.”

  He nodded, but with some hesitation. She’d told him everything that would be done to prepare, but she’d not divulged what would happen during the ritual itself. He had no idea what to expect, and as much as he wanted to flee in terror, he found he was curious about what he would witness.

  “Tyler,” she snapped. “I’m serious. Don’t break the seal.”

  “I won’t.”

  Imogene nodded, took a breath, and stepped into the center of the circle.

  Stephanie smiled. “Genie Tremly had tattoos?”

  “She did,” Professor Booth said. “Several, all along her back. She waited until he moved out.”

  Jack shook his head, smirking. “She used to go on and on about one’s body being their temple.”

  Stephanie held up her hand, showcasing the tribal design tattooed around her wrist. “Ain’t nothing wrong with glorifying your temple, Jackie.”

  “Indeed,” said the professor. “In her case, it was more about taking extra precautions. She believed the cleansing ritual would work but needed to demonstrate her conviction. The tattoos were just the start of it. She’d fasted for three days. A total cleanse of her body, including her medications. She was a trooper. I can’t imagine the sort of pain she was in. The cancer was already eating her up inside. She thought she could hide it from me, but I knew. I saw how she clenched her jaw whenever she moved, heard whenever she sucked air through her teeth to hold back the ache.” The old man reached for the flask again, stopping short when he remembered it was empty. Instead, he threaded his fingers to keep from fidgeting. “I can’t imagine the sort of pain she went through when things started happening for real.”

  Tyler sat at the bottom of the basement steps and watched her meditate. He assumed that’s what she was doing, sitting cross-legged in the center circle, her back arched forward while she rocked in place. The candle flames trembled with her movement, and for a while, he adopted her breathing pattern, mimicking the rise and fall of her fragile frame.

  Outside, the sun arced across the sky, the song of birds slowly displaced by the chirp of crickets in the fading light. Twice he retreated upstairs to relieve his bladder, and she was still in her sitting position each time he returned. Still rocking, still breathing deeply. Each time he returned, the shadows were longer, held at bay by the flickering candles and glow of the idol.

  She didn’t speak until sunset, in a different language with a different pair of lungs.

  Here the professor failed in his retelling, unable to reproduce the words she made, successful only in his description of the sounds ululating from her throat: a guttural hum in time with her breathing, punctuated by the uncomfortable noise of air strained through congestion. A deep phlegmy sound carrying in waves, rising in intensity as she rocked in place. The candle flames surged, pulsing in time to her raspy voice, flaring in a crescendo as she spat a wad of black earth from her lungs. The dark expectorant oozed down the wall and collected in a wet puddle.

  Tyler rose to his feet, eager to yank her from the circle but too terrified to move. The candles dimmed, their flames slowly extinguished by a rustling of air, and he could not see where the breeze was coming from. As their light faded, the azure glow of the idol filled the room, coating them in its haze. A pungent stench of rancid soil and dung filled the room, overpowering the incense and assaulting his nostrils with such force he struggled to keep his nausea at bay.

  Imogene gasped, her voice choke
d from her by a sudden pain writ upon her body. She trembled, holding herself while violent spasms tore through her. Her naked back rippled and seized, the skin pulled taut over bone, and the tattoos along her shoulders and spine bled. Black tributaries snaked their way down her back and collected in a pool on the floor, seeping toward the outer rim of the circle.

  A red glow emanated from the painted circle on the wall, intermingling with the blue haze pulsing from the idol, filling the room with an eerie light. Tyler put his back to the wall, bracing against the assault of sensation, and watched in helpless horror as his dear friend, his love, his darling, was subjected to a cosmic force by her own calling.

  She cried out in pain as her body left the floor, lifted into the air like a doll, her arms limp at her sides. Dark streams of blood pooled in the circle beneath her, seeping into the cracks in the foundation.

  Tyler wanted to run to her, free her from her unseen captor, but the horror of what emerged from the wall rooted him in place. The painted circle began to spin, turning on an axis like a locking mechanism; as it moved, the red glow grew brighter, overpowering the idol’s haze. The circle turned, sinking backward into the wall with each revolution, drilling its way into an impossible space from which came a collective sigh and brisk, stagnant air.

  “My God,” Tyler whispered, lifting a trembling hand to his mouth to stifle a scream. The universe peered back through the opening, a cosmos full of eyes focused on the naked queen levitating before their maw. Murmurs erupted from the portal, more of the same language spoken by Imogene during her meditation.

  Each enunciation was a guttural sound of consonants and cosmic bodies colliding, planets forming and dying, stars swelling into nova and shrinking into black holes of immeasurable mass. The sounds spilling from the tear was the universe, unfiltered, undefinable, and agonizingly chaotic. There was no order, no air with which to breathe, no time in which to think. There was only the essence of their existence, suddenly miniscule in the grand scale of everything but granted an audience with the eyes of something older, wiser.

  Something impartial.

  Something crawling along the strings of a universal lattice, plucking at fate when it pleased.

  In her dying moments, Imogene lifted her head to stare into the infinite. “Cleanse this soul of the nameless within and grant me life beyond life!” A harsh vibration ripped through the air itself, shaking the house on its foundations, the beams above their heads groaning in protest. The red light dimmed, and with a relieved gasp, Imogene uttered her final words: “As I am above, so shall I be below.”

  3

  Jack sat with his arms crossed, listening as the professor’s words degenerated into sobs. He wanted to be angry, felt like he had every right to be, but he also felt such a profound sadness that hearing the old man cry brought tears to his eyes. He loved her, he thought. Mamaw Genie always had a way of getting into your heart.

  But her lover’s story was something he’d not expected. Even after a lifetime of nightmares, even after the conclusions he’d reached with Stephanie and Riley the night before, he didn’t expect to hear this other side of his grandmother. He wasn’t even angry with her secrecy—far from it, in fact. He was more impressed she’d managed to keep it from him all that time, but even then, he wasn’t surprised.

  While Stephanie comforted the old man, Jack retreated upstairs and gathered his things. Chuck arched an eyebrow when Jack placed Imogene’s notebook on the table.

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember the key she left for me? It unlocked her old roll-top desk upstairs. This was in it.” Jack slid the notebook across the table. Chuck flipped it open, read the inscription on the first page.

  “So…she was keeping a scrapbook? About us and what happened? I don’t—”

  “This was with it.” Jack placed the grinning idol in the center of the table. Chuck’s expression fell, his face draining of color. He pushed back his seat and stood.

  “That’s not fucking real, man. That—I dreamed that. I made it up. It’s—no, man. No way.” Chuck stepped back until he’d pressed himself against the wall, knocking a framed photograph of Jack’s late grandfather askew. The idol sat in silence, its empty black eyes slowly leaking blue light, forever grinning like a child with a horrible secret.

  “It’s real,” Jack said quietly. “It’s important we come to terms with it right now.”

  “He’s right,” Stephanie said. “What happened under the church that day—shit, even in the years before that, it all really happened. We’ve talked about the nightmares, Chuck. They’re more than that. You know it. I know you do.”

  Chuck sank to the floor, shaking his head, unable to take his eyes off the awful thing on the table. “I can’t accept this. Okay, so, there’s a stone carving, and our crazy father worshiped it, but it doesn’t mean the rest of this shit is real. Genie was crazy, she—” His face fell when he met Jack’s stare. “Sorry, Jack. I took her money, okay? She paid me to put her affairs in order, make the arrangements, pull some strings where they needed pulled. I didn’t ask questions and, really, who else would? She’s the Stauford Witch. Nobody cared when she passed, except us, maybe.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” Jack said, “but it doesn’t change the truth. It doesn’t change what happened, or what’s happening. Even if the professor hadn’t called you, I would’ve. Because there’s something you need to know.”

  Stephanie returned to her seat and faced Chuck. “We think the man who took those boys Friday night is our father.”

  Chuck laughed and shook his head again. “This is insane. Listen to yourself, Steph. You, of all people—fuck, I never expected you to go all-in with this voodoo bullshit.”

  Jack reached for the notebook and threw it at his brother’s feet. “It’s all there, Chuck. What was it my grandma said? Death for life? There’s shit in there about moon rituals, something that bound our father to our grandparents. When they’re gone, he rises under the light of the first full moon.” He knelt before Chuck and flipped open the pages about the ritual. “Everything Tyler told us is in here. Binding rituals, life and death, joined with the cycle of the moon. Friday night was the first full moon since Mamaw Genie died. Friday night, those boys went missing—” He gestured toward Stephanie. “They were, what, five miles from Devil’s Creek? Three? Holly Bay’s not far.”

  She nodded. “Riley told us—”

  “Oh, great. Riley told you.” Chuck threw up his hands in mockery. “The preacher’s goth-wannabe rebel son, who idolizes you and would do anything to win your approval, told you he thinks our dead father came back to life to ruin a church group’s camping trip? Please, Steph. The kid is starved for attention and will do anything to get it. You’re too blind to see it because you’re his part-time mother.”

  “You’re such an asshole, Chuck.”

  “Enough.” The professor’s voice startled them all from their argument, and they turned to him like scolded children. “We don’t have time for this.” He pointed to the idol. “Chuck, whether you want to believe it or not, this thing is real. What happened back at the church wasn’t a dream, but what’s happening now is very much a nightmare. And I can tell you, as terrified as I am to admit it, I believe Genie was right.”

  Chuck scoffed. “Of course you do.”

  Tyler ignored him. “The whole reason I came here this morning was to tell Jack about what I found.” He turned to Imogene’s grandson and sighed. “My conscience got the better of me, son. After you left yesterday, I couldn’t help but wonder, was she right? Did her ritual work? So, I went to visit her grave this morning. She isn’t there anymore.”

  Jack’s face went white. “What do you mean she’s not there?”

  “I mean there’s a hole where her grave should be, and a hole in her coffin. She dug herself out.”

  Silence squirmed between them, the air pregnant with a kind of skepticism better known in the pews of a church. Jack studied the professor’s face for a hint of a smile, but Dr. B
ooth’s sunken eyes and thousand-yard stare suggested no punchline.

  Chuck broke the silence with a loud snort. “Well. That’s enough for me.” He shot to his feet and pulled his keys from his pocket. “Jack, Steph, nice to see you. Dr. Booth, I wish I could say the same. Me, I’m going back home to pretend this fucking meeting never happened.”

  He’d advanced no more than five steps from the dining room when dry, croaking laughter echoed from beyond the basement door. He froze, pivoting on his foot. “What the hell was that?”

  “It’s my mother,” Jack whispered. Both Stephanie and Chuck turned to him, stunned. “She came looking for the idol. She would’ve gotten it, too, if Tyler hadn’t shown up.”

  “Christ,” Stephanie whispered. “I thought she was locked up in the psych ward at Baptist Regional.”

  “She is,” Chuck said. He gestured to the bruises on Jack’s throat, the blood caked around his nostrils. “What do you call this in your line of work, Jack? Performance art? Some shit like that.”

  “Steph’s right,” Jack said. “You’re an asshole, Chuck.”

  Chuck sighed, holding up his hands in apology. “Okay, that was a cheap shot. I’m sorry. But consider what you’re all saying. Just because the idol is real doesn’t mean our father is alive and walking around. We all saw him take a bullet. God, how I could ever forget?” He paced back and forth in front of the table, working up his defense with one brick of logic at a time. He reminded Jack of a frightened animal. “So, your mom broke out of the hospital. I can believe that more than this bullshit about rituals, curses, and the dead returning to life. This is reality, okay? Stauford’s boogeyman is no more alive than its witch”

  Jack bit his tongue. You overbearing asshole, he thought, and was about to retort when Stephanie did so on his behalf. She slapped Chuck so hard his cheek glowed red with the imprint of her hand.

  “You unbelievable prick. Your grandpa raised you better. Jack’s your brother, for fuck’s sake.”