The Basement

by Tom Clarke

  “Professor Cowley if you please sir!” the aged Professor snipped back.

  “I don’t give a shit if it’s General Cowley!” I said back in a very venomous tone, leaning forward in my chair. “Neither of us scratched that shit in the wall!”

  I could see in the reflection of the window that Karen had stepped way back into the room and was watching the fireworks from a safe distance. My entire body was starting to tense, I was beginning to develop a very real dislike for this Professor Cowley.

  “Take it easy Jimmy” Darrel said. “Professor, we did not put the symbols on the wall, we are just trying to figure out what they are.”

  Cowley looked at Darrel, then back at me, he turned around facing away from us and said in a low voice, “On ceka na vas.”

  I jumped up out of my chair, “What the fuck did you just say to me!” The professor did not turn around, “I’m talking to you Cowley!” I growled. “What was that shit that just came out of your mouth!”

  A student who was walking by the office heard the commotion, opened the door, and poked his head into the office, “Professor is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Shut the fucking door and get the hell out of here before I bust your head like a zit!” I yelled at the young student, who by the speed of his retreat, had never had to deal with that level of hostility before.

  Poor Darrel, all he could do was stand there with his hand covering his mouth, trying not to laugh and mutter under his breath “Jesus Jimmy.”

  I took a few steps towards the Professor and said, “Cowley you don’t know who I am, or the shit that I have been through this week, but I am getting ready to educate you real quick!”

  As I was making this statement Cowley turned and faced me, his demeanor changed and I could see a sense of concern flushing across his face, “I am sorry for the accusations” Cowley said. “When Karen first showed me the pictures I assumed that it was some kids here on campus reading a spell book and playing with things they did not understand. My intention was to scare a confession out of them and then go from there. When I saw you I knew that you weren’t students here, but I figured I would go with the same approach.”

  “Professor, do you know who I am?” I asked.

  Cowley looked at Darrel and I with a slight sense of confusion, and then replied “I would assume by your looks you work for the garbage company or are in roofing or construction.”

  I looked at Darrel, shook my head a little and then pulled out my flat badge, which I handed to Professor Cowley. “I am Agent Richards with the state-wide drug enforcement task-force, this is Special Agent Wilcoks of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. We are the Police! Not college students and sure as shit not garbage men!”

  “Oh dear” Cowley said as he looked at my credentials. “I guess that would explain that slight bulge on your right hip” he said as he handed me back my badge.

  “Yes, yes it would” I replied referring to my handgun concealed with a department issued inside the pants holster.

  Cowley took a deep breath and sat down, then there was a knock at his office door, “Campus security, is everything okay Professor Cowley?”

  “Way to go Jimmy” Darrel said under his breath.

  “Fuck those guys” I said. “If they give us any shit before I get some answers I will kick their ass and then arrest them for hindering a federal investigation….and resisting arrest.”

  “What federal investigation?” Darrel asked.

  “You’re here aren’t you” I replied with a raised eyebrow. “Shut up and play your part.”

  The door cracked open and one of the security guards, another student by the looks of him, poked his head around the door. “Everything is fine” Cowley said, “thanks for stopping by.” The Professor must really have had a reputation on that campus because the student security guard didn’t even bat an eye, just shut the door and moved out with a purpose.

  After sitting back down and taking a few breaths, I started to calm down, “Professor let me apologize, I have had a very weird, stressful, and somewhat upsetting week. I didn’t mean to start yelling like that.”

  “It’s okay Agent Richards” Cowley said as he sat back down in his chair. “I totally understand.”

  “Thank you professor, I appreciate that, and please just call me Jim, you can probably guess by my appearance what I do for a living and the fewer people running around calling me agent the better off I am.”

  “Of course…Jim, and you sir, may I address you as?” Cowley asked looking right at Darrel

  “Please call me Darrel professor. I’m in the same boat as Jim and I would appreciate it if we could keep our professions our little secret.”

  “Of course, Darrel” Cowley replied. “Thank you both, I am sorry for my abruptness, and for implying you worked for the garbage company. Now to business! Tell me everything that you know about this circle you found in that basement” Professor Cowley asked.

  That’s exactly what I did, in as much detail as I cared to remember. As I recounted the events of the past few days Cowley sat there behind his desk listening intently. He was transfixed, I’m not even sure that he blinked for several minutes. As I worked through the events Darrel’s cousin Karen slowly moved from the back of the room to the front where she pulled a chair up next to Professor Cowley.

  When I finished I looked at Professor Cowley, fully expecting him to stand up, thank me for a good story and then excuse himself. That’s not what happened, “Jim, thank you, I know that was not easy for you.” Cowley’s demeanor had completely changed, he was almost understanding and sympathetic to what I had been through, what Keith had been through.

  As weird as it sounded the old man in front of me had gone from someone that I wanted to throat punch into someone who I felt like was trying to provide me with a measure of comfort.

  “Okay professor, you’re up” I said. “What am I dealing with here?”

  Professor Cowley slowly stood up from his desk, he walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled out an almost empty bottle of expensive Scotch. “Karen, can you be a dear and fetch some of the plastic cups from the closet” he asked.

  Karen walked to the back of the room, opened a small closet, and pulled out four plastic cups that looked like they had been liberated from the lunch room. As Professor Cowley poured what was left of his bottle of Scotch into each of the cups he casually said, “Jim, Darrel, you are dealing with a demon.” A chill suddenly ran down my spine and into my arms.

  “Cheers” Professor Cowley said as he raised his cup, he then took a slight sip. I looked at Darrel and the both of us shot the entire drink back.

  “Jim, Darrel, let me show you something” Cowley said as he removed several blown-up photos from his desk. “We are dealing with two separate incantations, if you will, one is designed to protect from the evil and the other is designed to bring the evil into our reality.” As I sat there and looked at the photos I thought to myself that normally this is the part where I would have gotten up and left, but at this stage of the game I was pretty open to just about anything.

  “Jim, Darrel, you see here the pictures that you sent. There, inside the circle, the words written in a spiral pattern from the inside of the circle towards the center. And in the center, and also intermixed within the spiral pattern these markings, they are Egyptian you know.”

  Darrel looked at me and said “I told you so!”

  Cowley continued, “The two patterns are fairly similar, using a lot of the same verbiage but with a different intended outcome. Gentleman the pictures that you took are of the spell designed to invoke the demon, to bring it into our reality.”

  “What a minute” I said, “our reality? What the hell does that mean?”

  Professor Cowley went on to explain that our reality was a lot like the surface of an ocean. We lived our lives on the surface of the ocean, that was our reality. But under the ocean there was another reality that played by different rules than our own. Cowley st
ated that the circle Keith and I had seen was designed to act like a bridge for specific creatures, or demons, from the other reality to pass into ours. Some apparently were good and half-way decent other dimensional creatures. Some were not so good, down right evil.

  Cowley said that once they are allowed to enter into our reality it is very hard, if not impossible, to get them to go back and the best that someone can hope to do is manage their presence.

  “So, let me see if I got this right professor” I said, “someone basically summoned this thing to our reality and now it’s just kind of jumping from place to place, fucking shit up as it goes?”

  Professor Cowley looked at me, stuttered at my language, and then said, “Well, basically that’s correct, yes.”

  “Okay” I said, still trying to get my head wrapped around the entire concept of other realities and demons. “So, when was this thing, this demon summoned up and brought into our reality, do we know that?”

  “Well Jim” Cowley replied, “based on the markings I would say that it was summoned sometime in ancient Egypt, the Croatian writing would tell me that over the years it probably inhabited a Croatian host.”

  “Wait, WHAT! This thing can live inside someone, like possess them?” I said.

  Cowley looked at me and said, “Again correct Jim, but it needs to be within close proximity to the spell, the carving on the wall. You see that acts kind of like a battery for it. The power of the incantation is what helps the demon impose it’s will.”

  “Oh my God” I said as I stood up from my chair and started walking around the room. I had never been a big believer in the supernatural. I knew that there was stuff going on that we as humans had no explanation for, but this, this was becoming too much too fast for me to process.

  “Professor, let me ask you this” said Darrel, “what does this thing want with people?”

  “Well what does any creature want, to feed” Cowley said looking at his empty cup.

  “I’m sorry, say that again!” I said from across the room.

  Cowley looked over at me, and then at Darrel who was standing there with his eyes wide and mouth slightly open, “It wants to eat, to sustain itself; this particular demon feeds on emotions like fear, anger, self-loathing. Like any predator it will take the path of least resistance when it comes to collecting people to feed from, people with weak minds and low self-esteem seem to be the easiest for them to manipulate.”

  “Well that would explain the drug addicts like Desie and those mouth breathers the LW’s” Darrel said.

  “Exactly, a good point Darrel” Cowley said, “I had never really thought about that.”

  “You see as the demon begins to exert its influence it will work to create a support structure, for all its strengths, it has a very hard time manifesting itself into a physical form, short of a possession.”

  “It’s creating a support structure! Are you fucking kidding me!” I barked.

  “Oh, Jim” Cowley replied as he sat back down in his chair, “I would say that based on what you told me, it already has one.”

  “Okay” Darrel said as he took a deep breath, “tell me more about this thing’s feeding habits.”

  “Well” the professor said, “typically the demon will cultivate an assistant of sorts to help it bring victims into its sphere of influence. This is usually done through a combination of manipulation and the promise of power within the new order that the demon will construct.”

  “That bottom feeding junkyard shithead King!” I said as I slowly banged my head against the wall.

  Cowley looked at me, frowned, and then continued, “As the demon feeds on a victim that person starts to take on traits of the demon, and then” the professor hesitated.

  “Then, then what?” Darrel asked.

  “Then, when they are of no use to the demon they are disposed of, usually in a ritual sacrifice that is intended to squeeze any last emotions of fear from them” Cowley finished.

  All the color ran out of Darrel’s face, he looked at me and I knew what he was thinking about, that container with the dead Croatian immigrants at the Port of Seattle. “Did you bring the other pictures bro?” I asked Darrel.

  “What other pictures?” Cowley asked with raised eyebrows.

  Darrel pulled out his phone and proceeded to show Professor Cowley and Karen the pictures of the decapitated immigrants inside the shipping container, as well as the circle and symbols that had been scrawled in blood inside the container.

  “Oh my God!” Cowley said as he sat back down. Karen covered her mouth with her right hand and grabbed her cousin Darrel on the arm with her left.

  “Please show me the picture of the circle again” Cowley asked as he tried to choke back his emotions.

  Darrel scrolled through to the picture of the circle and writing on the wall of the inside of the container. “You see how the lettering circles around the inside of the circle, and is not in a spiral pattern? That’s a protection spell, someone, probably one of those poor people tried to write the protection spell on the wall but were not able to complete it.”

  Darrel looked at the picture of the spell written in blood for a few seconds, then asked, “Professor when you said that the victim was sacrificed, did that mean that they had their heads cut off?”

  Professor Cowley answered in a very low tone of voice, “Yes, typically that is how it is done.”

  I could tell that both Professor Cowley and Karen were rattled by what they had just seen. They had probably read about and studied all the nasty, bad shit that people, and apparently in this case that demons do, but had never actually seen it. Having someone that they know show them first hand photos of that sort of carnage, I think really drove a point home with them, maybe a point that they were not ready to take on, but a point none the less.

  “Professor, tell me about the possession, how does that work? Professor?” I said again as I snapped my fingers in an attempt to bring his brain back into focus.

  “Yes Jim, I’m sorry, possession.” “Yes professor, the possession, how does that work?”

  Cowley sat forward in his chair, still obviously flustered by what he had just seen, “Well the demon has to be in close proximity and the person has to be pretty broken down, offering little, if any, resistance. Once the demon is inside and in control the person does not just vanish, they are in there with the demon, they are just not in control anymore.”

  “How long can it keep control of someone?” I asked.

  “Well that depends on the person” Cowley replied, “The weaker the mind, the longer the possession, the stronger the mind the harder it is for the demon to possess the person and keep that control in place.”

  “Professor, what happens when the demon leaves the person?” Karen asked, her hand still somewhat covering her mouth.

  Professor Cowley looked up at Karen and said, “My dear without proper treatment the victim of this particular possession will usually kill themselves, which is just another feeding mechanism of this particular monster.”

  Darrel and I walked off to the side, “Okay, some of this shit is starting to make some sense and actually fall into place” I said. “If we take what the professor has told us, then I think that we can almost put together a timeline for this nonsense.”

  “How so?” Darrel asked.

  “Well look at the LW’s, about a year ago they were a bunch of low-yield drug addicts that couldn’t spell their own names, and look at King, same shit. Then all of the sudden, again about a year ago, this joker Lone Wolf Ripper shows up. Now if we were dealing with a normal club I would say that he was sent from the mother chapter to clean shit up, but the Lone Wolves have no mother chapter.”

  Darrel sat down, I could see the wheels turning in his head. I looked over and also paying very close attention was Professor Cowley and Karen, who had no idea what I was talking about, but were extremely interested non-the-less, “So about a year ago Ripper shows up and slowly the LW’s start getting their numbers up and their acts
together! The intelligence reports on those guys have been showing slow increases in their activity over a long period of time.”

  Darrel interrupted, “Jim, it was about a year and a half ago when that shit went down in the Port of Seattle.”

  I sat back down next to Darrel, “Bro, what if this demon hitched a ride to our neck of the woods after shit canning all those people in Seattle by possessing this Lone Wolf Ripper? Who by the way, we don’t have a positive identification on, just that stupid ass biker name….Ripper, who does he think he’s kidding with that anyway?”

  “Go on” Darrel said slightly smirking about my comments.

  “So, this Ripper cat shows in our area and links up with King. He makes a deal with King, just like the Professor said, and the next thing you know King is wearing a full patch, something that he has wanted dearly for a long time now. It would be the equivalent of offering someone a seat at the head table, he would have instant respect and power by holding down a top position in the club.”