Gravel Switch: the black goat chronicles book 1: a Weird Tale of Extreme Horror

by Davidson, Aleister

  “So, you did hear my call,” a voice like icy daggers bypassed Hank’s ears and entered straight into his brain. He realized that it was telepathic as it had used no mouth to produce the voice. “I can taste your fear. You will do just fine. A flavor like yours comes but once a millennia. Yes. Yessss….”

  Hank’s heart was racing. He could feel his pulse pounding in his neck, in his temple, in his wrists. Sweat poured down his forehead and dizziness overwhelmed him again. The sound of the beast before him had not subsided, even during its telepathic speech. He was the prey, he knew it. He had never felt like a predator, but had never felt like prey either. In this moment he knew the fear of the door mouse when it meets the house cat. Trembling he braced as two of the lashing tentacles came to rest upon his face, one on each cheek. He felt suckers pulling at his face, then hooks tear into his flesh through them. He could not pull away without mutilating his face. The tentacles seemed to pulse and then Hank became aware that this thing was drinking. And what it was drinking was him! Without any other course of action coming immediately to mind he yelled at the horror.

  “Please, don’t kill me! Please!” he wet himself as he yelled at the grotesque monstrosity.

  “Kill you? I am eating your fear!” the voice penetrated Hank’s brain in a tone intimating that he should be thanking the abomination. “You could not even begin to fathom that which I am taking from you, that which I want of you and that which I will have of you in days to come. Still, do not worry yourself, it will all be over soon.”

  Hank trembled and pissed himself again as he saw his life flashing before his eyes. Despite his absolute terror he became more and more relaxed each moment. He could tell that the thing was injecting something into him to keep him calm, some juice full of a that which was a blasphemy against nature. Hank forced his eyes open to look once again upon the utter horror of the thing and noticed that the fabric of reality itself was peeling apart around it. The air swirled in vortices opening and closing portals to strange dimensions, undulating in waves of color and sound, the makeup of space-time distorting and warping around that sluggish maggot that Hank could neither describe as wholly alien nor wholly demon but as some strange amalgamation of both which should not exist. Yet it writhed before him as it fed on his essence. Yes that is what it was taking from him. Not his blood, nor his fear as it claimed. It was sucking him dry of his very life force. Some strange vampiric thing from god only knew what wretched corner of the galaxy was going to drink him away.

  “You have no right!” he screamed at it. “My soul is mine and mine alone, you cannot take it. My life force is mine, you cannot have it!”

  “Silly mortal, you are my plaything, whether you like it or not. Your soul has belonged to me since you stepped over the threshold into this house. I was ancient before the star which this pathetic planet orbits was born from the primordial fire. I have eaten worlds, slain gods, reaped the souls of entire galaxies. And you claim your soul for your own? So be it then mortal. If you can manage to hold onto it then it is yours. But…before I am done with you…you will give it unto me willingly. You will beg me to take it from you like the burden which it is. Otherwise, left to your own devices, you will only find oblivion.”

  Hank was slow to respond, though as rapidly as the thoughts of what he would say gathered in his brain the thing knew them. He could not hide from it. Every word it spoke was true, he knew that, deep in his core, in his heart and soul he knew that. When he did finally find the words to speak he noticed that the tentacles imbedded in his face where no longer there, though he could not recall them receding away from him they obviously had. He touched his cheeks with hands expecting to find mutilated or punctured flesh, but instead he was unmarred by the intrusive touch of its alien tendrils.

  All of the physical structure of the basement seemed to have faded away into a congeries of chromatic sprays and strobing, floating orbs of light which pulsed and glowed in rhythm with the black ichor pumping through the maggot’s physical veins. Somehow Hank understood that the lights he perceived where just as much a part of it and its consciousness as anything inside of its body. As he finally opened his mouth to speak he wondered if our physical reality was even capable of holding the entirety of the creature as he realized it existed partially in some other cosmic plane.

  “I would rather have oblivion than to give myself to you willingly,” Hank tried to be as defiant as possible. “Did you take the souls of all the ghosts of this house then? Is that why they are all trapped here? They belong to you don’t they? I don’t want to end up like them.”

  “I have placed my mark upon you mortal. Know this and despair. I have laid claim to you throughout all realms and across all realities. You were given to me by my earthly followers, yet I shall release you for a price,” the sound of its voice came as a hoard of locusts flying through a jet engine and gave Hank an instant migraine.

  Hank wondered what it meant about earthly followers, but thought it best not to ask about it and to just be as straightforward as possible. “What is the price?” he played along with it.

  “Three lives. The charlatan. The adulteress. The young novice. Feed me these three lives, no more, no less. No others will do. The rituals of desecration will come naturally as I guide your hand in doing my work. Three lives for one soul. That is the deal.”

  Hank found that darkness was overtaking his vision. The sight of the physical aspect of the monster was gone from his view, though he still felt its presence. It was only the flickers of the tears in reality and the glowing orbs of strobing, incandescent contagion that remained for Hank to see, the rest swallowed up by a sea of blackness, that was covering everything like a thick ink.

  “Ok,” was all Hank could manage to say as total darkness overwhelmed him.

  Hank awoke several hours later according to his watch. He was passed out on the floor in the laundry room. To his astonishment he found that there was no basement door in the laundry room at all. Just as he thought, again, all in his head! Hank knew he was crazy. It was only a matter of time until his delusions became so realistic, he knew that. Still he couldn’t get over how intense the situation had seemed. He went into the kitchen, made a cup of coffee and called up his friend Alan, who came over immediately.

  Hank recalled the events of the evening as quickly and as explicitly as he could. He was candid with Alan that he doubted his mental health, yet still Alan could see that he was shaken and was genuinely afraid. To Hank’s surprise he was totally open to everything that Hank had to tell him. Perhaps it would have been different if they had not shared their experiences with the beasts in the woods with one another. The foundation of that bond and how Alan treated him the same as he ever did meant the world to Hank in the wake of his experience, whether it was a mental breakdown or not.

  “Hank it’s funny to me that you mention ‘at monster. My great aunt use’ to tell me stories ‘bout it when I wuz a kid. Tried’a keep me outta his house, which me an’ my friends use’ to like playin’ in when we wuz little.”

  Hank began to freak out a bit inside, he bit his lip a little out of stress. Then he asked Alan the one thing he wanted to know the most, “What is it man? I mean, what the hell is it!?”

  “I dunno. I never believed it was real. But if you seen it, even in a dream or a seizure…I dunno. ‘at might change thangs a little,” Alan showed his doubt, but not in the existence of the monster. Hank could tell by the man’s body language that he was holding back.

  “This wasn’t either of those!” Hank interrupted out of frustration. “I was lucid and awake.”

  “Either way…it’s just too much coincidence, cuz everything you said is what my auntie use’ to tell me. Supposedly its some sort of demon. It’s been in ‘ese hills since before God himself was born. They say them things that’s out here in ‘ese woods…well them’s its children. Its spawn. Supposedly some of the local folk use’ to sacrifice their kids to it, back over a hundred years ago. I dunno…mostly just stories I hea
rd. I mean I never believed ‘em at all. But damn, I mean, you never even heard of it and you seen it. That’s just freaky,” Alan seemed genuinely scared in a way Hank had never seen before. It was more than obvious that the conversation was making him uncomfortable.

  “So, what do we call it? I mean, what did ya’ll call it when you were kids Alan?”

  “We called it the Larvamog. Cuz it’s like a big ole maggot thing,” Alan said, a shiver going up his spine that made him shudder as he finished the thought. “The old folks use’ to say its true name was Larvothmagog or some such shit.”

  “He’s seen it too.” Hank thought to himself. Alan wasn’t as good at hiding things as Hank was at picking up on them. “Let’s smoke a joint and figure out what to do about this Larvamog. I know I’m crazy…but maybe I’m just picking up on the collective consciousness of the local fears. Or maybe this thing is actually real. If it is? Well, damn, it’s kinda up to us to fuck that thing up if we can. To take it out,” Hank was feeling powerful at the thought of making war on something, on anything. His impotence had left him feeling wholly inadequate. The thought of taking the fight to a giant, demonic space-maggot gave him an emotional surge inside that was the closest thing he had known in months to feeling virile. And whether Alan was onboard or not Hank knew in that moment that he would dedicate everything he had left to fighting that horrible, grotesque monstrosity.

  “Larvamog…buoy, it’s a demon supposedly. I guess we could try, but I dunno ‘bout fightin’ no demons,” Alan was a country boy. Of course he would be superstitious, especially about local legends; still hank thought that Alan would be nearly as gung-ho as he was to put a big hurt on that damned abomination. Hank knew for sure that he was in it alone. Alan didn’t even want to believe in it. He feared it. But he would not fight it.

  After Alan had gone home Hank got a good night’s sleep. He had one more day before he was to go into Lexington with Jared to pick Amy up from the hospital. She had recovered from the wounds easily enough, but contracted a nasty strain of the MERSA virus and had to be treated with experimental drugs and antibiotics. That gave Hank a solid day to build a plan. If he couldn’t count on Alan’s help then he probably wouldn’t get anyone in Marion county to help him. Normally he would have turned to his friend Yuri in an intense situation, but he still hadn’t come to terms with what happened to the Almeidas. The thought of needing his old friend there brought him no comfort and left a whole in his heart which he had to ignore in order to function at all. Hank knew he was shoving some heavy emotional weight to the back burner and he knew that eventually it would boil over and cause a mess, but in the moment he had no focus to deal with how he had been feeling. Getting Amy home from the hospital was enough of an emotional roller coaster.

  With no living person to turn to Hank decided to finally reach out to the spirits in the house who had been so adamant about getting his attention. He didn’t know how to do it, but he knew that after the way Alan had acted that he wasn’t crazy, or at least not delusional. Nobody could have normal mental health after seeing Larvamog. Whether flesh and blood or hallucination, or both, it was madness itself just to gaze upon the cursed thing. So he postulated that if he could believe in giant space-maggots then he could believe in ghosts. Especially with all of the shit they had pulled on him. The bumps in the night, the little girl with the white dress and the creepy toy doll, furniture rearranging itself, that was just the beginning of the insanity he had been dealing with. He couldn’t believe how dismissive he had been of his own experiences. Still it had been a mechanism to try to maintain his sanity, just as then in that moment embracing it became. It was a sort of cognitive dissonance that Hank was eager to engage in, though he did see the contradiction.

  “Whatever it takes to get this shit out of my life,” Hank said to himself as a mantra, repeating it every twenty minutes or so.

  Hank spent the rest of the day on the internet researching demons and their weaknesses, extraterrestrials and how to contact ghosts. He read articles and websites all day long, through the evening, only leaving the computer to eat and use the bathroom and to make Boris dinner and let him out. The fight had become his new obsession.

  “I will save myself. I will save Amy. I will save the whole damn town, but most of all I will save the tormented souls that were helplessly trapped in this damn house!” Hank felt alive at the sound of his voice roaring through the house as Boris stared at him, barking in excitement.

  Even though Hank was sitting at his computer desk and reading he envisioned himself as a knight of righteousness, taking up arms in the fight against a cosmic evil which only he had the power to defeat. Hell, only he was truly aware of it. Still one thought persisted that caused him much consternation and doubt, “If it is a larvae then what does it turn into?”

  11

  The Railwayman

  Amy came home from the hospital to find the house was a total mess, but she didn’t care. She was just happy to be home with Boris and, to a lesser extent, with Hank. She had Jared write her new prescriptions and they called them in to the Walgreen’s she worked at and picked them up on the way home.

  Amy was thankful that Jared had been there for her, but had seen quite enough of him while she was in the hospital. As much as she loved being with him, near him, talking to him, even fucking him, she had begun to fear him. And Amy knew it was all in her own head and she shouldn’t hold it against him, but she had experienced several nightmares featuring him while she was in the hospital. The kind of nightmares from which she would wake up screaming and wake up all of the other patients on the floor. As Amy thought on it she realized that she had only dreamt nightmares while in the hospital. Not necessarily all bad dreams about Jared, but all bad dreams nonetheless.

  Sleeping in her own bed would be a good reprieve from that bed of terrors that she had known for the past six weeks. Hank had Alan bring over a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken extra crispy with all the sides and extra biscuits. It was her favorite fast food and she looked forward to chowing down on that greasy, heavenly goodness. Hospital food was always appalling to Amy, but six weeks of it was much more than she could bear. With Hank’s income from his weed growing she was used to eating steak, lobster, pork chops, casseroles, scallops and clams, whatever she wanted. Most of what she found palatable in the hospital had been brightly colored gelatinous dishes, not all of which were necessarily jell-o.

  Hank was surprisingly quiet on the ride home and Amy wondered if he was aware that she had been with Jared. She didn’t really care, she knew that he would have to understand or their marriage would end. Either way Amy had made peace with the possibility. She knew that she deserved happiness, especially after all that had happened. Guilt free happiness was exactly what she wanted. After all of those weeks in the hospital Amy asked Jared if she should leave Hank and if he would be interested in being with her. To her absolute astonishment Jared suggested that she try to work it out with Hank and promised to prescribe Hank something for erectile dysfunction.

  And that was where things were for her. On the edge of falling apart, riding on uncertainty. Amy’s only option was to just let it play out and see what happened. So in light of that she was simply all good with whatever happened. In fact she looked forward to some major change, just anything but life as usual.

  When they got back to their place Hank made a pot of coffee and they smoked a few bowls from Hank’s favorite pipe with Jared. It wasn’t long before they were all good and stoned and Jared had to be off to feed his pets. As soon as he left Hank began to tell Amy about all of the events that occurred while she was healing and everything that had happened in the house or on the property that he had yet to tell her about. He talked for hours and she barely responded at all, just a few nods and, “uh huh’s.”

  When he was done Amy took a few deep breaths, which put Hank on edge immediately. He became in an instant paranoid, unable to resist falling into the pit of despair that came with it. Yet when she spoke it was everything Han
k wanted to hear.

  “I believe everything that you say Hank. Everything. I’m just glad that you recognize now that you aren’t crazy. Or aren’t just crazy,” she laughed. “I have had a lot of things I have experienced too and I will tell you about them all. But first I need to tell you about that night,” Amy shuddered as she spoke. “Whatever attacked me, it was some sort of red eyed monster from hell or something. It was just like what you said you saw baby. It was something altogether unnatural. I was so afraid. But it spoke to me. It spoke! It said that it wasn’t going to kill me, not yet at least. But it made damn sure to let me know that it, or they if there’s more than one like you say, wasn’t after me. They are after you Hank. I don’t know why, but they want to scare you, hurt you, kill you. They want to eat your fucking soul Hank and I am caught in the middle! We need to move the fuck out of here. Now.”

  “Amy we can’t. I have to get five thousand more clones to Jared’s friends,” Hank lied to her so she didn’t worry. He had been late on his first round of cuttings, the clones that would be the next multi-ton harvest of central Kentucky outdoor. He had actually only been able to come through with two thousand. He had no idea what the repercussions would be but he knew he would be punished somehow. He knew that as the season wore on there would be little time left to plant. He popped a couple of Valium so that he could calm down a bit, worried that he would have a seizure on Amy’s first night home.