Coming of Age: Three Novellas (Dark Suspense, Gothic Thriller, Supernatural Horror)

by Douglas Clegg

  She showed me the visage of a god whose true name should have been destroyed millennia ago. In the ancient tongue of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, a savage, devouring god whose hunger for children and the innocent is never-ending….

  Five: Shelter

  They found nothing in the ditch on the side of the road – neither were there any people – or deer – moaning in the woods.

  “Whatever it was, it was big and strong.”

  “Brilliant deduction,” Michelle said.

  “A bear, maybe,” Dash said.

  “We got bears out here?” Danny asked.

  Michelle flipped out her cell phone. The green light came up, and she began punching in numbers. “You have triple A, Dash?”

  “No.”

  “Who you callin’?” Mark asked.

  Michelle turned her back to them.

  Then, she said, “Rachel? It’s ‘chelle. Listen, Dash wrecked his car out – no, we’re okay. Oh my god, I know,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper as she said stuff that Mark was sure had to do with what geeks they were and how she’d been stuck riding with them because Danny was too drunk to drive. Then, her voice returned to normal. “No, no idea. We’re not far from some farmhouse. And a graveyard. Yep. We have a special gift for you. I am not telling. Can you send your brother out to Route --Rachel? Rachel? You’re breaking up. Damn it,” Michelle said, slapping her phone shut. She spun around. “You guys have a cell phone?”

  “I’m technologically challenged at the moment,” Dash shrugged, and went to grab a beer from the back of the car. When he got there, scrambling around the backseat, he shouted, “Jesus, Danny, did you drink two six packs?”

  “I don’t think so,” Danny said, looking at both Michelle and Mark with the look of an innocent puppy. “Did I?”

  “Found one. Wait, found three. No, five. Who wants a beer?”

  “I do!” Mark shouted.

  “Yeah,” Danny said.

  Michelle opened her cell phone again, and tried dialing. “We’re in one of those dead areas.”

  “Dead?” Danny grinned.

  “Can’t get through,” Michelle said, practically under her breath. She went over and stood beside Mark, and touched him lightly on the shoulder. “I guess we can’t just walk to the party? Jesus, Danny, you always have that damn cell phone.”

  “We can find another phone,” Dash said. “There’s that church.”

  “Or the farmhouse.”

  “Church is closer. There’s either going to be a payphone or an office phone in there.”

  The sky began dripping with rain. The soft distant rumble of thunder.

  “It’s coming back,” Danny said. “One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.”

  A few seconds later a flash of lightning hit that was so bright it seemed to illuminate the forest, and for a moment, Mark thought he saw people standing there, behind some trees.

  Danny began counting again, and a louder rumble of thunder sounded.

  The rain began coming down fast, and Dash called out, “Come on, this way,” and Michelle put the puppy in the little carrier; Danny took it in his left hand and held her hand with his right, and they ran together. Mark jogged behind them all, down the now-slick road.

  Within minutes, Dash ran to the right, up the grass-covered path that led to the Old Church. Mud sloshed all around. The rain came down in sheets, and Danny was laughing and running, and the puppy in the carrier was barking; Mark held the flashlight up so they could see their way up the path, and couldn’t wait to get inside the church and be dry again.

  As they got closer to it, Mark noticed that there was a flickering light from within the church.

  “God, we should’ve just stayed in the car,” Michelle said.

  She was soaked, her hair, dripping, her shirt pasted to her breasts. “This feels a little déjà vu in the junior high department. I can’t wait to get out of this place and get to Northampton. May this be my last rainy night in Manossett.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. Then, he added, “God, I feel wasted.”

  “I’m amazed you’re on your feet,” Michelle said, nearly cheerfully.

  “I can always go down the road to that farmhouse, too,” Mark said, not breaking eye contact with Michelle.

  “No need, Marco,” Dash said.

  They huddled inside the arched doorway of the church, Mark pressed against the thick wooden door.

  “This is more of a chapel than an actual church,” Dash said. “It’s one of the oldest in this area.”

  “It’s locked,” Danny said.

  The windows were all shuttered and locked from the inside, as well – Mark had checked when they’d first arrived.

  Lightning lit the night again, and Mark saw the rocky graveyard lit up. Again, he thought he saw people – a group of them there – but they seemed blurred to him, and he wasn’t sure if perhaps he should quit drinking beer.

  “This kind of place,” Dash said, “has to have a key. This isn’t the kind of hangout people worry about getting broken into. Not way the hell out here.”

  He felt around in the recesses of the arch as it peaked and then dipped, and cried out, “Gotcha!”

  He held up a thin round key. “Ask and it shall be given to you.”

  “Thank god,” Michelle said. “I just want to be somewhere dry.”

  Mark kept looking out through the heavy rain at the darkness of the graveyard. He heard the door open behind him. The puppy whimpered in its carrier, and Danny made baby noises to it as he lifted it and took it inside.

  One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand.

  The sky lit up with whiteness.

  There, in the graveyard, shadows of people.

  And what looked like an open grave.

  Then, darkness. Rain. The grumble and crack of thunder.

  “The world’s smallest chapel,” Dash said. “You probably know its history.”

  The chapel was one oblong room, with angles cut into it to create recesses with shrines along its gray stone walls.

  Mark noticed the windows first – barely slits to let in light, with stained glass in them. The shutters outside were deceptive – they were large, and made Mark think the place had large windows as well. When he and Dash had been in the graveyard before, they’d never thought to venture in the church itself. It was a plain, nearly bare church, with flat, long benches for pews. The altar looked very much like a wide flat stone of four or five feet in length, and two feet wide.

  There were fat long candles in brass holders up and down the aisles, all lit.

  “Well, there’s no phone here,” Michelle said. “At least it’s dry.”

  “Yeah. And it’s better than being out there.”

  “How’s the puppy?” she asked.

  Danny crouched beside the carrier and looked in. “Doing fine. Chewing on his rawhide.”

  “Damn,” Dash said. “My ciggies are ruined.” He held his pack of Marlboros up.

  “I have some,” Mark said. He reached into his pocket, and drew out two cigarettes. “Got a lighter?”

  “I do,” Danny said, feeling in his pockets.

  “I got matches,” Dash said, withdrawing some from within his jacket. “And shockingly, they’re dry. Five left.” He struck one against the matchbook, and Mark passed him a cigarette.

  “You keep these,” he passed the matches to Mark once he’d begun puffing on the cigarette. Mark thrust the matches into the back pocket of his jeans. “You got four more cigarettes and four more matches. Perfect, Marco.”

  “I hope Rachel appreciates the effort we go to for her birthday,” Michelle said. She reached into her handbag and withdrew a comb. She ran it through her hair, her head tilting sideway. She wandered over to one of the pews near the front of the chapel. “So now what?” She patted the bench where she sat, and Danny sat down beside her. Soon his arm was around her waist, and she leaned against his shoulder, looking up at the candles at the altar. “This is one ugly chapel. Those puritans really
– holy crap, look at that!” she pointed toward the curved wall behind the altar.

  Mark immediately looked up. Behind the flickering candle, there was a painting that reminded him of something from his sophomore European History book. It was nearly medieval looking – a faded painting of what seemed to be several monks, their heads shaved in tonsure.

  “Those look like the guys I saw,” Michelle gasped, and then giggled. “How bizarre.”

  “Oh yeah, the monks we hit,” Dash said, his voice brimming with contempt. "The ones wearing antlers."

  “Gives me the creeps, a little,” Michelle said. “Now I really wish we’d stayed in the car.”

  “And risk getting hit from behind by another car? No thank you,” Dash said. “What good would that do? Your cell phone won’t work. I know this place. I’m sure there’s a phone in it.”

  Mark said something about how seeing a painting of monks in a chapel was not the strangest thing in the world, but the whole time he felt like he was lying. Wasn’t sure why, but there was something funny about the painting.

  He walked up the aisle to get a closer look. Stepped up the worn, uneven stone steps to the altar.

  The monks had faces that were like softened inverted triangles, and large wise eyes. There were four of them. In one of their hands, there was what looked like a thin white flute that bore markings – Hebrew? Latin? Mark had no idea. As he gazed at it in the shimmering candlelight, he thought it might be the thin tusk of some wild animal rather than a flute. One of the monks held a round stone in his hand, or perhaps it was a large wafer of some kind. Again, this had strange marking upon it. The third monk held both his hands out. The third monk’s hands were merely presented as having nothing in them.

  But the fourth monk in the group held a small human skull in his hands.

  The skull had small bumps along its scalp – two just above the forehead. And its front row of teeth seemed unusually sharp, nearly wolf-like.

  “It’s funny,” Mark said.

  Behind him, Michelle. She had gotten up and looked around the altar, too. “What?”

  “I was sure I’d been in here once. A long time ago. Some time. But I guess I never have. I’ve been outside before. But never in here. I’ve never even seen anyone go in here before.”

  “Look at this,” Michelle said. He turned, and she was reading something off the top of the slab.

  He went to look. The stone tablet was covered with a stubble of mold or some kind of dusty lichen. Michelle brushed some of it off. “Look at that, Mark,” she said, pointing to something carved into the stone.

  Mark thought the drawing was a squiggle of circles and lines intersecting – some abstract Christian imagery. He noticed that it had eyes.

  “It’s some kind of bird,” she said.

  “Or bug. Look at its wings. There are four of them,” Mark said. In his mind, the words Swarmgod of the Thousand Stingers seemed to surface. Words beneath the carved figure. “Is this Aramaic or something?”

  “It’s Latin,” Dash said from the back of the room. “Or Greek.”

  “I took Latin in ninth grade,” Michelle said. “It doesn’t look like anything I remember.”

  “Then it’s Greek,” Dash said. “I’ve been in here before. I got a guided tour. This is one of the oldest churches in New England.”

  “How old?” Michelle asked, idly, her eyes never leaving the altar top.

  “I would guess the 1600s.”

  “No, wait, I know what language this is. This is just French,” Michelle said. “It’s just carved in the stone with such a strange script, I didn’t notice it. Let’s see, this means, no, maybe it’s not French. It’s something I recognize.” She leaned against the stone tablet. “Why would the pilgrims write in Greek? Or French?”

  “I’m sure more than just pilgrims have been using this in the past five hundred or so years,” Mark volunteered.

  “That’s right,” Dash said.

  “This is Latin, this part of it.” Michelle’s fingers traced the engraving. “VE. DEU. VI. Well, it’s all broken up. It could mean anything. And what the hell is that? It looks like a round mouth full of sharp teeth.”

  “Deu is probably Deus,” Mark said. The words seemed to be in his head: The Devourer. She Who Befouls The Night. The Pope of Pestilence.

  “Maybe,” Michelle nodded. “These drawings are fascinating. They almost look like caveman paintings. This word – AMOR. That’s easy. Unless it’s part of a longer word – too bad it got rubbed away here. I just wish I could figure out the letters in between.”

  “I didn’t know you studied Latin,” Mark said.

  “Two years, but I switched to French junior year. I stopped enjoying it,” Michelle said. Then she arched an eyebrow. “What, you think I’m just some dumb rich girl skating through life?”

  “No, no, really, I don’t,” Mark said.

  “Well, there’s always more to people than you think. Even you and your buddy,” Michelle offered a sweet smile. “I’ll probably major in comparative lit at Smith, if I can take German and handle it at the same time. Someday, maybe I’ll translate great works of literature. Or be a foreign correspondent.”

  “Or a spy,” Dash said.

  Mark almost wanted to tell Dash to shut up. He had his own interest in language, and had been studying Spanish in school, but had wanted to learn French, too. He looked at Michelle carefully, as if seeing her for the first time. She noticed, and laughed.

  “I guess it takes a car wreck and a storm for us to get along,” she said. He felt warmth from her, just standing beside her. Connecting in some way that he never thought he could with a girl like Michelle.

  “Well, obviously, there’s no phone here,” Dash said. “Maybe we better take a hike.”

  “Yeah,” Mark said, feeling a bit more like a man.

  “I’ll be fine here. I’m going to try and decipher this stuff,” Michelle said. “Danny, you want to go with them?”

  Danny, the puppy in his lap, made a motion that seemed to indicate that the puppy needed him.

  “Me and Mark will go to that farmhouse,” Dash said. “You two stay here. What, it’s maybe a mile down the road?”

  Mark nodded. “Yeah.”

  “We can run.”

  “Sure,” Mark said, but dreaded the rain.

  “You two just continue the party here, dry off, and we’ll be back,” Dash said. “Feel free to chug the last beer, Danny.”

  The rain had slowed to a steady but light sprinkling. The lightning was off in a distant sky, barely lighting the path from the old church.

  “Okay, now, here’s what we do,” Dash said.

  “What’s all this?” Mark said.

  “Huh?”

  “‘Huh?’ You planned this,” Mark said. “I know you did. What is all this? The church. The crash. Huh?”

  “Come on, Marco, I told you, we’ll have a little fun.”

  “It’s not fun. It’s the opposite of fun. Fun would be the party. Fun would be anywhere but here.”

  They walked out among the graves. Mark kept the flashlight on the ground to avoid any rocks and stones.

  “She’s a bitch, you know that? Don’t let her fool you with all that Latin shit. She spent half of high school thinking that guys like you and me are less than toads, so don’t suddenly get all sugary just because she shows you her rack.”

  “Maybe we are less than toads, Dash. Maybe all this Nowhere crap makes us warts on toads.”

  “Blasphemy.” Dash reached over and slapped him hard on the face.

  It stung. Mark reached up and touched his cheek.

  “Tonight is the night.” Dash said grabbed him by the elbow, and pulled him close to him. The flashlight fell from Mark’s hand. Dash’s breath was all beer. “Look, you’ve known since you were thirteen that you were going to be part of this. You knew. And tonight is the night. Just like in the book. It’s the Night of Lifting the Veil. It is nearly midnight. It is midsummer’s night. The shortest night of the ye
ar. The night when the veil between our world and the world of the Nowhere is thinnest.”

  Mark laughed. “Come on, Dash. Come on.”

  He pulled away from Dash, walking ahead on a narrow, scraggly path between gravestones. “Get real.”

  Then, Mark thought he saw something before him – some shape that was all shadow, and he saw that at the edge of the graveyard, like a gate, there were people standing there, in long coats or cloaks, he wasn’t sure, but he could see them.

  He heard Dash groan behind him.

  Sound of sudden movement.

  Mark was about to turn around to see what was wrong, when something hit him hard on the side of the head, and he was out.

  Mark awoke a few seconds later, feeling dizzy. His vision blurred. All shadows and scant moonlight around him.

  The rain kept coming down.

  He lay in mud.

  He thought he saw others there, those people, those monks, whoever and whatever they were, and it seemed nearly natural to see them. He almost expected them. Had it all been true? Had everything Dash had been telling him about the Nowhere – all those stories – been true?

  He lay there, blinking, in the rain.

  Of course, a cult could survive. There were all kinds of cults and religions in the world. But right here? In Manosset, in the 21st century? And could they be so backward and ignorant as to truly believe that there were gods with such ridiculous names as She Who Befouls the Night?

  But those were just nicknames. He knew that from the Wacey Crossing stories. All names for the gods were not their true names. Their true names were only known by those who held the power.

  The back of his head throbbed.

  He looked up into Dash’s face, shadowed with night.

  Were they alone? He felt alone.

  “Here’s the thing. You’ve got to listen very carefully, Marco. Very carefully. There are words, and they’re on this,” Dash pressed something into Mark’s hand. His fingers curled around it instinctively. “Sometimes, the god that enters gets out of hand. And has to be stopped. The words will stop the god. The words are the only thing that stops the god. Listen. Just lie there and listen or I will hit you again so hard so help me god Marco you might never wake up. Listen! This is so important,” Dash said.