The Equinox

by M J Preston

  So I did the next most enticing thing: I crawled into a bottle. I had a case of scotch in the cellar to add to my half-killed forty pounder. I went down and brought up four bottles, set them out neatly on my counter and began to binge.

  Days passed as I drank heavily and slept intermittently. I was losing track of time, but I could feel the change inside me. It was around the second bottle when the transformation began.

  How do I explain this?

  I felt like I had fallen off the slimy edge of a submerged rock shelf into the abyss of darkness with nothing to hold onto. I was slowly sinking deeper and deeper and as I drowned in the dark crevasse the ‘old me’ died, and a monster took shape in my place. This new creature would be without remorse, without compassion, and it would crave more. As I slipped away, I could feel it taking over me.

  Maybe I’ll grab two boys next time, the dark half mused.

  I had begun to abandon what was left of my conscience. I was changing and though you might argue that I was already a molester and a murderer, what I was becoming was even worse.

  Then the paranoia started.

  Something terrible was coming, of this I was sure.

  The entire time I drank, I did nothing but watch the burial site through my front window. I poured drink after drink down my gullet, becoming delusional. My body would succumb, dragging me in and out of a comatose state. When I awoke, I began watching the grave again, looking for a change of some type. Anyone else might have thought the paranoia ridiculous, but ‘anyone else’ had not killed and buried a young boy under the maple tree in their front yard.

  Something inside me demanded that I keep watch over that grave. Something powerful and frightening. All the while, I could feel that darker half picking at me. It was insisting that no police would be coming to ask questions about the missing boy. At first, I pushed the voice away, settling for the bottle – but with each passing hour, it continued to argue. Come on, Stephen, what have you got to lose now? The voice asked. I’ll tell you: nothing.

  “Fuck you!” I barked drunkenly – but already it was enveloping me. It seemed that it was only a matter of time before I would go out cruising for a new victim.

  In my semi-sober state, I decided that night that I would write a note, get the shotgun I kept around for coyotes and kill myself. With this decision, I poured another glass of scotch and decided to have one last blowout before I pulled the plug.

  Numerous drinks later, a thunderstorm knocked out the power and the phone lines, so I decided to wait until morning. Then I would contact the police and tell them they had to come to the house. Once that was done, I would leave the note on the kitchen table and shoot myself in the head.

  I took up my usual spot and opened the last bottle of scotch. By my second drink, the rain began to bead on the window outside as it became darker. With the recliner set right in front of the picture window, I stared at the gravesite and saw the raven again. It had flown down from a branch and was walking about upon the fresh sods. But this was much, much larger than your average bird.

  I hated these fucking birds. They were always in my corn, wreaking havoc on my crop. I might have got my gun and taken a shot at it but reminded myself that very soon it would not matter.

  It wandered atop the grave, pecking at the sods, then cast its gaze toward me. At first, I didn’t believe it was looking at me. Dumb animals think about two things: sex and food. But it continued to gawk. I could not tear my eyes away, abruptly thinking that this big black bird knew my secret. Maybe it was a messenger from Hell coming to collect my soul?

  “Come and get it or fuck off.”

  Then the bird took flight, leaving me to mock my own paranoia.

  Jesus Christ, you’re fucking losing it, Steve-O.

  I settled back, took another sip, and another.

  Soon I was pouring a new drink, and as I was on the edge of another stupor, I raised the glass defiantly. “Cheers.” And I took another gulp.

  “See you on my way to Hell, the kid.”

  Not long after, I blacked out.

  7

  Thunder crashed, startling me awake to the acrid stench of vomit. Brushing my hand against my shirt, I could feel the cold sticky bile peppered with tiny hard pebbles of whatever I had eaten during my blackout. I pulled my hand away in disgust and peered out into the darkness of the front yard as I wiped it on the armrest.

  The sky was almost pitch black, and I could barely see the silhouette of the big maple. Then lightning flashed, imprinting a negative of the yard on my vision. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light or my mind playing games - then the lightning flashed again, timed with the rumble of thunder from the first strike. I jumped from the chair and pressed against the glass, gawking in disbelief.

  Oh my God! Oh my God, no!

  The grave had been unearthed, the sods askew and piles of dirt were haphazardly pushed outward. I backed away from the window, stupidly thinking it might be the police who had dug him up, but my mind was quick to dismiss that.

  Maybe he isn’t dead, my mind screamed, but that was impossible. I had left his body there to bleed out. Even if I had buried him alive, there was no way he could have dug his way free. I had covered him with at least seven or eight hundred pounds of dirt. Never mind that he had been underground for a couple days.

  Nevertheless, I backed away from the window, yet unable to tear my eyes from it. I backed right into the coffee table. Empty scotch bottles clinked against each other, then fell to the floor. I pinwheeled and managed to catch myself before joining them.

  I had one thing in mind now. Get the gun!

  Using the wall as a guide, I continued to back up, and when I felt the door jamb, I turned to run for the bedroom and came face to face with what could only be conjured up from the mind of a terrified child.

  I heard its labored breathing. In and out like an asthmatic horse. At first, I did not know who or what it was, just that it towered above me over seven feet high. Then I recognized tattered clothing and could see the thing’s neck was twisted perversely to the right. That gave away its identity instantly.

  It looked like a rotted corpse, huge and mutated.

  “Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepheeeeeeeeeeen,” it hissed through a grin of clenched teeth. Its hair hung in wet braids, dripping plops of mud onto the floor. It was the boy, his spine and bones mutated and stretched, skin torn and rotted, malformed into this thing from hell.

  My legs became rubbery.

  It glared at me, with eyes ablaze a fiery white, like miniature fluorescent globes in its sockets. I could smell the stink of decay on its breath. I tried to back away, thinking I would die of a heart attack at any moment as the muscles in my chest contracted and wrung the breath from my body. That would have been a blessing.

  “Where are you going?” it thundered. An oversized hand caught me by the scruff of my shirt. I tried to pull away, but it jerked me in and roared. “I said where are you going, Stephen?” Bits of dirt and spittle rained down on my face.

  “Please,” I begged, trying to wiggle free.

  “Please! PLEASE!” It bellowed a loud echo of laughter that shook the whole house. Then it slapped something into my hand. I looked down to see it was the chunk of scalp.

  “Nobody rides for free, Stephen, isn’t that right? Not even you!”

  That was a joke I had shared with him when I picked him up.

  “God!” My heart almost stopped.

  “God?” it parroted. “God will not help you.”

  It let out a high-pitched shriek that made the remaining upstanding scotch bottles tumble from the table with a series of hollow thuds. Then it pulled me even closer and lifted me off the ground so that I was inches from its face. A beetle crawled out of its nostril and up onto one of its eyes, where it cooked off in the searing heat.

  “I’m sorry,” I cried. “I didn’t...”


  “Sorry? You aren’t sorry!” As it spoke it spat clods of dirt at me, and its grip tightened. My shirt twisted under its hand like a tourniquet crushing my windpipe.

  I couldn’t breathe. Thinking I would be killed at any moment, I closed my eyes, silently begging God’s forgiveness. I would not look at it. I would only pray, and though I could hear the rush of its breath in and out, I clamped my eyes tightly closed.

  Then it flung me against the door jamb, and I crashed to the floor. There at its feet, I prayed for a way out of this, pledging my soul to any God that would save me from this horrible fate. Its breathing became sluggish and muted. My ears sealed up, and I waited to be dealt the final indignity before it tore me apart.

  Then there was only a vacuous silence.

  I expected to open my eyes, and its face would be right there, just inches away. I waited for it to reach down and tear me apart limb from limb, but nothing. I could hear no panting, nor could I smell the dank stench of wet dirt: there was only the jackhammer in my chest pumping erratically, beating in my ears. It seemed a very long time I lay there, not daring to open my eyes.

  Then I heard another voice.

  “It’s gone, Stephen.”

  This voice was calm and reassuring. I was paralyzed with fear, and sure this was a ruse.

  “You can open your eyes, Stephen. It is gone.” The voice was brittle and impatient, but added, “I promise.”

  I still didn’t dare open my eyes. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a friend. The only friend you have left in this world.”

  “I have no friends. I’ve gone mad. Dear God, please forgive me.”

  The voice sighed impatiently. “Open your eyes. Open them now, or I’ll bring it back!”

  And so, I squinted, the lashes on my eyelids still interlocked. I was ready to slam them shut at the first sign of the gruesome beast – but the voice spoke the truth. The monstrosity that had lifted me up was gone, and in the shadowy darkness of the living room, everything was back to normal, except for the dark figure who sat comfortably in my chair. That, and the fact that the room’s temperature had dropped to below freezing.

  “Feel better,” he asked, but he really wasn’t asking. Instead, he was implying that I should feel better.

  I could not see his face; he sat in the shadows and spoke with the slow methodic voice of a man negotiating a business deal.

  “Where did you come from?” I implored.

  He reached over, picked up my pack of cigarettes and pulled out a smoke, tapping it on his thumbnail. “You beckoned me.” Then he struck a match to light. It should have illuminated his face – but it didn’t.

  I don’t think he had a face.

  “Beckoned?”

  He reached out and picked up the quarter full bottle of scotch, and the contents began to freeze almost instantly. Had I conjured up a demon, the devil himself?

  A faint mist rose from his silhouette – though it was not so much a mist, but a gas like you might see rising from a slab of dry ice. He was the source of the cold in the room.

  “I’m calling the police,” I blurted suddenly, forgetting that the lines were down.

  “Go ahead,” he dared.

  I picked the phone up off the floor.

  He continued, “Do you want to know what they’ll find?”

  He was enjoying this exchange, almost as if we were engaged in a game of poker rather than a mad discussion of beckoning and the undead.

  “What?”

  “They’ll find a man named Stephen Hopper, dead for no apparent reason. They won’t know what horror or pain you will have suffered. They will not see you plead for death and believe me, Stephen; death will be an act of kindness. So go ahead; call the police.”

  He took a drag of the cigarette.

  I set the receiver down on the table and stood before him a broken man. “Who are you?” I knew the word I meant to ask, but I didn’t dare ask ‘what.’

  “I am either your friend or your worst nightmare. To defy me is the nastiest mistake you can make. I have powers that are unimaginable. You have seen some of those powers tonight, but they pale in comparison to what I am capable of. Perhaps we can delve deeper into that as we get to know each other – but for now, I am going to offer you a one-time deal.”

  “What is that?”

  He raised his hand. Suddenly I was blinded and felt piercing red-hot needles behind my optic nerves. I fell to my knees in agony.

  “Don’t interrupt me, Stephen. Not only is it rude, but stupid.”

  My eyesight restored itself, the pain subsiding while he continued to speak as if nothing happened. “As I said, I am here to offer you a deal. I’m not going to patronize you, Stephen: you are damned, but I am giving you an option to prolong your stay here and keep doing what it is you like to do.”

  “Deal? I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do. Don’t act stupid. That is a quality I dislike, and it brings out a part of me you would rather not see. You can come with me now, and I will promise you an eternity of suffering, or you can simply carry on. If you act as my caretaker and do my bidding, I will allow you to stay here as long as there is air in your lungs.”

  “Carry on?” I didn’t understand at first; or didn’t want to.

  He sighed then. “You humans can be so obtuse, needing everything spelled out for you. I have lived for centuries, and you don’t know how irritating that is.” He paused a second, gathering himself, or restraining the anger I had instilled in him. “You can do what it is that turns your fancy, but killing will not be a part of that equation.”

  “I can’t do that,” I protested, but it was weak and insincere.

  He crushed out the cigarette on my coffee table and leaned forward, capturing me with his eyes. “I want you to bring back more boys, but you mustn’t kill them. Once you are done with them, they will be mine.”

  He waved his hand, and the basement door swung slowly open – except it wasn’t the opening to my basement anymore. Instantly, he was beside me, escorting me to the doorway. An eerie blue light emanated from the opening, cold fog billowed out and across the floor. A thousand voices cried and shrieked, and though I tried to cover my ears, I could not silence them.

  I was convinced that I was staring into the chasm of hell. While the tormented souls continued their melody of pain, the cold vapor was lit up by strobes of light. There was something else moving down there in the void, something not suffering, but the inflictor of the anguish I heard. There were low guttural growls, followed by obscure words that could only be pleading. The door jamb cracked, splintering from the extreme cold, and I waited for him to push me down the stairwell into the depths of hell.

  His voice, calm and business-like, overpowered the cries of the damned, and he gave his ultimatum. “What will it be, Stephen? Come now… or later?”

  “Alright,” I cried.

  The door slammed shut with a crash, sealing the void and my fate.

  “Good,” he replied, leading me away. “I thought you’d see it my way. You’ll be able to sleep now, but there are few more things we need to discuss before I go. Just some procedures, so you don’t leave loose ends.”

  He told me never to take the locals. Taking the locals would raise eyebrows and bring suspicion, which would lead to the end of our contract and inevitably me. He also told me that I could bring them back and do whatever I wanted with them, but I was never to kill them.

  “When you see a large raven perched at your window you will release them into the cornfield,” he instructed.

  I suddenly recalled the raven that had been watching when I buried the boy’s body. I was not sure of its significance at the time but knew it was somehow attached to this man.

  “I wouldn’t recommend you watch what happens when you let them go. You might lose your nerve. Just do as I say, and everything
will work out for both of us.”

  I listened intently as he gave a few more instructions and finally finished.

  “Go to bed now, Stephen; get some rest. I will be back by the week’s end. You have three days.”

  “What is your name?”

  “You can call me Franklin.”

  “Franklin,” I repeated turning my eyes to the floor. Did I just sign a pact with the Devil? Then, another voice: Goddamned right you did.

  I looked back, and he was gone. I would have thought the whole event an alcohol-induced nightmare, or the beginnings of insanity if not for what he left behind. There, in the empty chair, was the frozen outline of where he’d been sitting.

  I leaned across the table, daring to wave my hands through the area to make sure he was gone. I moaned, then covered my mouth, hushing the cries that wanted to get out, holding the madness in. I had just cut a deal with an agent of the devil, and like Faust, there would be no bartering when he came to collect me.

  Terrified curiosity made me touch my index and middle finger to the frozen cloth on the chair, but I quickly pulled them away. The tips of my fingers were waxy white; frostbite set in instantly. I didn’t dare put them in my mouth.

  Suddenly, I was incredibly tired; the fatigue from the week’s events and the more recent night terror had drained my strength completely. I went to my room and fell face down on my bed.

  I did not dream.

  I awoke late in the afternoon the next day. Initially, I thought it might have all been a horrible nightmare, but when I returned to the easy-chair, I saw the moisture that still clung to it. The crushed out cigarette on my coffee table also refuted any reasoning that the previous night’s events were a hallucination.

  I then went out and checked the boy’s grave in front of the house. The sods, which I’d cut and laid so carefully, look disturbed somehow. I began to shake uncontrollably.

  There would be no turning back. I did not want to face the consequences if this dark man returned, and I had nothing to offer. So I prepped my van and set out on the hunt.