The
Demonologia
Biblica
Compiled & Edited
by Dean M Drinkel
Copyright © 2013 Western Legends Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1482705605
ISBN-13: 978-1482705607
The Demonologia Biblica
Copyright © 2013 individual authors
and Western Legends Press
Cover Artwork © 2013 James Powell
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places are either invented by the authors or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real events, locations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design
By DT Griffith
Western Legends Logo Created by D.T. Griffith
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1482705605
ISBN-13: 978-1482705607
Dean M Drinkel
[email protected]
Western Legends Press
P.O. BOX 1226
Hollywood, California 90078
www.facebook.com/WesternLegendsPress
For:
Zac, Alex
Emily, Sarah
Billy, Abbey
Sam
Vincent
And
Scott
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven...”
John Milton – Paradise Lost
Table of Contents
Introduction
A Is For Alpdrücke
B Is For Berith
C Is For Chordewa
D Is For Djunga
E Is For Eisheth
F Is For Furcas
G Is For Gaap
H Is For Hrace
I Is For Ipos
J Is For Jerobaal
K Is For Kilcrops
L Is For Lempo
M Is For Moloch
N Is For Nickar
O Is For Onoskelis
P Is For Phartouche
Q Is For Qangiel Yah
R Is For Ronove
S Is For Sitakh
T is for Titivillus
U Is For Uphir
V Is For Vicua
W Is For Wolf
X Is For Xezbeth
Y Is For Yester
Z Is For Zizuph
Biographies
Acknowledgements
Introduction
“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues...”
- Mark 16:17
So, here it is, the Demonologia Biblica. The first in a collection of anthologies to be published by Western Legends throughout 2013 under the banner: “Tres Librorum Prohibitorum”.
What therefore is the Demonologia? Well, simply put, it’s a lexicon of demons – beginning with the Letter A and finishing with the Letter Z – obvious perhaps...but interestingly with a book about demons I have opened with Barbie Wilde and closed with Nicholas Vince – for those Clive Barker fans reading this, both Barbie and Nick are part of the Hellraiser mythos which had the tagline “Demon to some, Angels to others”, seemingly very apt.
Of course, the anthology is full-to-bursting with great writers (some new, some award nominated, some award winning) from all around the world. All so talented, that my job as editor was almost redundant and all of which, I’m positive, I will be working with again.
But the Demonologia is something more.
Much more in fact than the sum of its parts.
I was recently researching a film project and came across a French nobleman from the 15th Century. His name was Gilles de Montmorency-Laval, Baron de Rais, who was a serial killer and heavily into the occult.
At his trial in 1438, it was said that de Rais had sought out individuals who were purported to summon demons.
These summoning words were put into a Grimoire fashioned from human skin and which was commonly known as the Demonologia Biblica.
A book which mysteriously vanished after de Rais’ execution but which is often talked about in ‘Dark Circles’. Imagine the power one could wield with such a weapon!
Though who knows – maybe it never existed in the first place and was just a figment of someone’s warped imagination...I guess we may never know...
...so until that book is found, turn the page and immerse yourself in the unique demonic worlds these twenty-six authors have created for you...
...get thee behind me, demon...
Dean M Drinkel
Editor’s Note
In the stories that follow, the Author’s original spelling and intention has been retained depending upon their nationality (ie through/thru, etcetera).
A Is F or Alpdrücke
Barbie Wilde
"Pock!"
The noise startled Jim awake. He opened his eyes and it was deathly dark, with just a hint of moonlight coming in through the curtained windows. The high-ceilinged room was unfamiliar, bluish and vast. Gripped by fear, he could barely breathe. Then there was the sound of a ball slow-bouncing towards him.
"Pock!"
Where the fuck was that noise coming from? Then he heard a monstrous ‘thwack!’ of something hitting the wall above his head. Ricochet…followed by the bouncing sound.
He tried to get up, but he was frozen, unable to move, incapable of protecting himself from whatever was toying with him. In the left-hand, logical side of his brain, he knew it must be some kind of nightmarish sleep paralysis, a complaint that he'd been suffering from for the last couple of weeks, but it didn't stop the horror of knowing that there was something in the room with him.
"Pock!"
He finally recognized the sound as a tennis racket hitting a ball. Then a ‘thwack!’ above his head again - the ball smashing against the headboard at great velocity. The slow bouncing sound. Whoever, or whatever, was lobbing the ball at him was coming closer, he could sense it.
His breathing became frantic. He had to wake up, but it was impossible. Then, through the gloom, he perceived a darker darkness moving towards him. For the first time, he could see the luminous green ball being tossed up and then a tennis racket whooshing through the air.
“Pock!”
The brutalizer zoomed directly at his head, but at the last minute it veered up and hit the headboard again. He was hyperventilating now - moaning with fear. The figure scurried to the foot of the bed - raising up the racket once more - and that's when Jim caught sight of the strings gleaming in the moonlight. Strings made of cheese-wire, sharp as hell. He knew in his gut that if the racket made contact with his face, it would be cubed into a hundred bloody pieces.
Jim tried to scream out loud, but the only noise he could make was a girlish, high-pitched wheezing. That's when he sensed a cockroach on his pillow at ear level, tickling his earlobe with its antennae, screeching in a tinny, David-Hedison-as-The-Fly-caught-in-the-spider-web voice: “Wake up, wake up!”
The small figure of darker than darkness was at his bedside now. The horrifying thing was that even standing up, it was tiny. Was it some kind of satanic child perhaps? A mad, diseased ape? That concept was much worse than a grown-up monster. What was even stranger was that it seemed to be wearing some kind of ludicrous hat. However, instead of making Jim laugh, it only heightened his terror.
Suddenly, the thing jumped up and landed on his chest. He couldn’t breathe. The gleaming racket was hovering just over his face - the blood from some previous unfortunate victim dripping off the glistening cheese wire strings - and the most hideous aspect of something peering through the racket, as if the thing was checking its reflection in a hand mirror. A glimpse of a demonic, grin
ning face floating above him.
Then the thing rasped: “Anyone for tennis?”
Jim finally managed to scream.
The demon’s hand gripped his shoulder and shook him, as if to rouse him from his trance, so he could experience the true nastiness of his impending diced death, but then the pillow cockroach squeaked "wake up!" so loudly in his ear that real life came thundering back.
Bam! He was awake: heart racing; legs jumping; flesh goose-bumped and ice-cold; gasping for air like a dying goldfish. Marney, his girlfriend, was shaking him awake.
“Jesus, I thought you were dying,” Marney said, in not a very friendly manner.
“I thought I was,” wheezed Jim.
“I couldn’t wake you up. Do you know how scary that is?!” Marney demanded and Jim tried to be sympathetic and failed. She attempted to pry his dream out of him, and he finally spilled the beans on the recurrent nightmare that was keeping them both awake.
Marney said, “You’re joking, right? A tennis-playing, silly hat-wearing dwarf? That’s the thing that’s been terrifying you for the last few weeks? Why don’t you just get out of bed and squish him for goodness sake.”
Jim sighed. He was too tired to reply. Marney turned around and eventually grumbled herself back to sleep, while he lay awake, afraid to return to that unpleasant dreamland where he was so vulnerable. Eventually though, a groggy tiredness dragged him down to the pit of unconsciousness like a quagmire of quicksand and he was helpless to stop it.
He was in a deep, crystal clear, natural pool in the jungle that looked like one of those Mayan sacrificial wells where they used to gaily toss in their virgins - trying to ward off whatever fate eventually destroyed their civilization. A shaft of moonlight pierced the water and he could see he was at least twenty feet below the surface. He looked down and it was as if he was poised at the edge of an abyss filled with cold, black, oily water. He started to swim upward. His heart began to race again and he was fearful that he wouldn’t have enough breath to get to the top. He glanced down and that’s when he saw them: white shapely arms floating up out of the depths like sea snakes beckoning to him, trying to grab his legs and drag him back down to oblivion.
He screamed and the air bubbled out of his mouth. He was drowning. The ghostly arms of a thousand dead maidens drifted up, grabbed him and held him in place.
“Pock!”
Sailing through the water was another nightmare luminous green tennis ball –zeroing in at his head. The evil dark dwarf thing had followed him here to the inky pool. He frantically thrashed his limbs to free himself from the wraithlike arms and managed to make his way up to the surface, his lungs bursting.
The wet cockroach hanging onto his shoulder for dear life shrieked in his ear: “Wake up, damn you!”
“Oh, fuck,” Jim shuddered and sat up. No more sleep for him tonight.
“That’s it!” Marney said. “You’re going to see a doctor about this, or I’m moving out.”
Jim was still trembling from the after-effects of his dream. “What’s the point? It’s just a dream. It’s not like they can crawl into my head and slay the monster.”
“Well, maybe they can give you some drugs so you can sleep. You’ve got to do something. You’re going to have a heart attack one night if this keeps going on.”
For once, Jim agreed with her.
***
A few days later, he was sitting in Dr Gardner’s office, where he was getting the lowdown on attending a sleep clinic. Although the doctor was pretty sure that Jim was suffering from sleep paralysis - in particular, the more uncommon recurrent isolated sleep paralysis (RISP) - he felt that it was best to confirm the diagnosis by performing a multi-parametric test at a sleep clinic.
Called a Polysomnography (PSG), the test would make a comprehensive recording of the biophysiological changes that occur during sleep. The PSG would monitor many of Jim’s body functions including the brain (EEG), eye movements (EOG), muscle activity or skeletal muscle activation (EMG) and heart rhythm (ECG) during sleep. The clinic’s technicians would also monitor respiratory airflow and respiratory effort, along with peripheral pulse oximetry (the saturation of Jim’s hemoglobin).
How the hell Jim was supposed to sleep with gizmo’s stuck on his head, chest and fingers, as well as up his nose was beyond him. On the other hand, perhaps all those distractions might keep his death dwarf from bothering him.
***
It was just a few hours before his appointment and Jim went to the local café to calm his nerves and try to finish the graphic novel he was struggling to design. Lack of sleep was making his creative life a mess. The waitress brought over his usual order of a decaf black coffee and apple pie, and he was about to tuck in when a hand descended on his shoulder. Jim nearly jumped out of his socks, but it was just Marney, on a cigarette break from her law office around the corner. There was someone with her, a tall, distinguished-looking, older man with twinkling blue eyes and an accent. He looked a little bit like the alien guy, Klaatu, from the original 1951 version of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’, except his strong eyebrows, as black as his hair was white, met in the middle. She introduced him as Mr. Zeiner, a friend of hers from the accounting department of her law firm.
They both sat down at his table and Jim wondered why Zeiner had joined them.Marney: “Jim, I’ve been chatting to Mr. Zeiner about your sleep paralysis. He thinks he may know what’s bothering you.”
Jim was baffled and annoyed, but he didn’t show it. He hated it when Marney talked to strangers about his problems.
Jim: “Listen, I’m visiting the sleep clinic tonight. Until I get the telemetry, no one’s going to know what the diagnosis really is. Unless Mr. Zeiner here, is a doctor?”
Mr. Zeiner: “No, my young friend, I am not a doctor. However, I am familiar with these demons of the night.”
Jim: “Whoah, buddy. I suffer from nightmares and sleep paralysis. That’s it.”
Mr. Zeiner: “Nightmares cannot possibly explain the extreme terrors you are experiencing. Tell me, have you ever been to Germany?”
Jim: “No.”
Mr. Zeiner: “You see, the fact that your demon dwarf wore a hat is very significant. It serves as his cloak of invisibility, if you like. This particular demon is called an Alp and it is very well known in Germanic folklore. What you experienced was an Alpdrücke, an ‘Alp attack’, where an Alp jumps on your chest and tries to suffocate you. You are very lucky that it did not try to suck blood from your nipples as well, or even strangle you. As for the tennis racket…”
Jim: “…sorry, I gotta go to the john.”
Jim got up from the table and walked briskly to the toilets, rapidly followed by Marney. She grabbed his arm and he shook her off.
Marney: “Don’t be so rude! He’s only trying to help.”
Jim: “You’re joking, right?”
Marney: “Mr. Zeiner says that he’s come across a lot of these cases in Germany. He thinks he can help you.”
Jim: “You know, Marney, I think I’ll leave myself to the ministrations of science, thank you very much. Tell Mr. Zeiner that I had to leave because I had an appointment with my local exorcist, OK?”
Jim left through the side entrance, the steam almost visibly coming out of his ears. Was Marney crazy? What was she thinking of?
***
A few hours later, Jim was lying in a bed in the Eastside Sleep Clinic. The pillow was comfy enough and the sheets clean and sweet-smelling. The clinic technicians had wired him up so they could monitor his EEG, EOG, EMG and ECG. They placed a pulse oximeter on his finger and put pressure transducers in his nose to measure his nasal airflow. He stared at the ceiling, trying to relax, trying to forget Marney and stupid old Mr. Zeiner, with his tales of Germanic demons with crazy hats.
In forty minutes, Jim had achieved the first level of NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement - sleep) called Stage N1. This occurred mostly in the beginning of sleep, accompanied by slow eye movements. The Alpha waves disappeared and the Thet
a wave appeared. People aroused from this stage often believe that they have been fully awake.
Then he slipped into Stage 2, when no eye movement occurs and dreaming is very rare.
At Stage 3, Jim reached deep, slow-wave sleep. Delta waves began to occur and then dominated. Dreaming was more common in this stage than in other stages of NREM sleep. The content of dreams during this stage tended to be disconnected, less vivid, and less memorable than those that occurred during REM sleep.
Finally, Jim settled into REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, characterized by the rapid and random movement of the eyes. The activity of the brain's neurons was quite similar to that during waking hours and the sleeper was more likely to remember dreams from this stage.
The technicians, Brad Durning and Samantha Pesce (also known as Sam), were keeping an eye on Jim’s Polysomnography recordings in the monitor room, which was filled with banks of computer and TV screens. They were having a coffee break when Samantha saw something out of the corner of her eye scurrying around Jim’s small bedroom.
“What the fuck is that?” Sam stood up and exclaimed, nearly spilling her coffee into the console - rather unprofessional behavior in Brad’s opinion.
“What?” He replied and then she pointed at the CCTV monitor linked to Jim’s room.
“Whoah, is that a rat?” Brad said, halfway out of his chair, as the thing, whatever it was, scampered under Jim’s bed.
At the same time, Sam noticed that Jim was in distress, making the high-pitched whimpering noises that Marney had reported to the technicians in the initial conference stage of the diagnosis. His heart rate was also up and the levels of his EEG were spiking – showing high levels of mental activity.
Brad jumped up and ran to Jim’s room, reluctantly followed by Sam. Arriving at the door, he turned the knob, but for some unfathomable reason, it didn’t work. He turned around to a panting Sam, who had just arrived.
The Demonologia Biblica Page 1