by Josh Shiben
Chapter 3
The Nekrodeus
The sun was just rising over the forest as Gregori stared from the upper windows of the manor, watching the golden sliver consume the night. He liked to come here when the sun was cresting the horizon, gazing patiently as the autumnal trees cast long, hand-like shadows from the tips of their branches – shadows that danced delicately and ephemerally, free and alive. But Gregori knew the truth. They were never free – born slaves to the wind through the trees and the rising of the sun. A man’s shadow could move and run as any man, but could never truly live. It was merely an illusion of life. A mockery of the true form – a black penumbra pretending to be that which is. The boy savored the thought and turned it over in his mind.
When he’d first had thoughts like this, it had frightened him. He’d felt as if he had ever so briefly ripped a veil from the world – that the ugliness of creation had been partially laid bare, and he alone had stolen a glimpse of it. He avoided the book and the thoughts that came with it for months, until he had grown accustomed to the whispers of his own mind, and eventually learned to accept the knowledge. It was a forbidden fruit – an unutterable secret few could ever guess, and even fewer could ever appreciate; a secret whispered in the unknown words and forgotten feelings of the dark.
He resolved to look through Father’s book again when he got the chance. The oaf had brought the tome back from his war before Gregori had even been born, and thought of it only as another thing of value. Father had beaten Gregori when he had last caught him with it, as if it were nothing more than one of his stolen paintings displayed around the manor. He knew nothing of the passages within, of the deep, forgotten secrets buried in its pages. But Gregori knew. He had learned the many languages of the tome, gobbling up new vocabulary as fast as his tutors could supply. Greek, Latin, and even Arabic flowed fluidly from Gregori’s tongue.
Young Gregori read from the Nekrodeus, and he understood.
Burfict eyed the barn as he and Samuels approached it. The structure was weather-worn and decrepit, with a slight list to the walls, almost as if it was slouching under its own weight. The dried paint was faded and chipped, leaving mostly greying wood exposed, while tall grass and weeds sprung up from the ground along the walls. Leanne Grange saw them pull up and walked over to the car. She was a smaller woman, but moved assuredly, in an almost angry march of a stride. Samuels would often describe her as a “firecracker” to those who she had never met, and Burfict felt that the description fit. A relatively new addition to the force, she brought an enthusiasm and assertiveness that they’d been missing for some time.
She brought them up to speed as they walked into the building. “Farmer who owns this land says he found the body this morning. Victim’s ID says his name is Nathan Sullivan, local. No signs of a struggle, but he’s got extensive injuries around his mouth. Looks like somebody tried to rip his face off. Nothing we can see under the nails, no other major injuries.” Burfict sensed a certain amount of fatigue, but also excitement in her. Alertness spurred on by the task at hand, like a hound after a fox.
“Any idea how long’s he been here?” asked Burfict, taking in the interior of the structure - it smelled like mold and rotted wood. Burfict wondered how much longer the structure would stand; surely no more than a few years.
“Coroner guesses a couple of days based on the flies, but we won’t know for sure until the autopsy. Farmer said he shows up about once a week, so six or seven days at the most.” The three stopped at the nude body crumpled in a heap on the earthen ground. Burfict recognized the pose from the corpse in his dream. A swarm of blue flies hummed greedily over their feast, lighting on it at random. The remains of five candles circled the corpse, long since melted down. It didn’t make sense – he never saw the victim in his first dream, it was always the perp. But if the perpetrator was here and already dead, what was the crime?
“You think he was here for a little romance?” murmured Samuels. “Guy goes to some abandoned spot, sets up a ring of candles, gets naked. Sounds like a sex thing to me.”
Leanne thought for a moment before replying. “So what killed him? And why did nobody report it until the guy who owns this farm happened to swing by?”
“Drugs? He ODs and the chick gets scared and runs off. Something eats his face post-mortem. A dog or raccoon or something.” Grange cocked her head to the side and mulled the thought over.
Burfict left the two of them to their debate and began examining the rest of the barn. In a pile by the door were Sullivan’s effects – some clothes, worn out shoes and a backpack. Nothing interesting was in the clothes, just a wallet with little more than a long-expired license. The address looked familiar somehow, as if he’d seen it before somewhere. He frowned and tried to think.
1288 Juniper Lane
He was certain he had seen it before, but just couldn’t place it. He opened the backpack and started rummaging through it, looking for anything that might be enlightening. He found a lighter, a few more candles and a tattered cloth wrapped around a rod. Curious, he unrolled the cloth and was surprised to see an image painted on it. It was old and faded, but Burfict could clearly see the figure that had once brightly been depicted. A goat-headed man sat cross-legged raising his right arm towards a crescent moon. Something in Latin was printed on the inside of his arms, and from his back sprouted two large black wings. A thick pentagram adorned the figure’s forehead. “Samuels, Grange, you might want to take a look at this.” The two hurried over to look at the scroll.
“Well, shit. What is that? Some sort of Satanism thing?” breathed Samuels.
“Five candles back there, right? So it’s probably a pentagram, not a ring,” agreed Burfict.
“Maybe this wasn’t an accident. Maybe it’s like a ritual suicide or something.” Leanne sounded intrigued. “Either way, we need to get this autopsy done ASAP.” Burfict and Samuels murmured in agreement as they all three watched the coroner load the body into a bag. Burfict couldn’t shake the feeling that the leering, mutilated face was peering out at him as the zipper was slowly drawn up.
From the journals of Dr. Alan Kaspars
9/29
John’s library account with Tuscaron has been active within the last year. It took some convincing, but I eventually got the librarian to tell me the book he had been looking into most recently. It was an extremely old tome of occult studies dating back to the 11th century, along with the modern translations. One of the librarians took me down into the basement of the structure so I could get it out and examine it. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t take it home.
Down in the basement of the library, there were hundreds of these ancient books. The entire cellar was humidity controlled, and you could just smell the age in there. It was incredible. Who knew a quaint little college like Tuscaron could have such an amazing collection? I mentioned the breadth of the library to the librarian, and she told me that the entire university had been privately founded in order to create a repository and center of study for these books. Apparently, Roger Weder, the founder of Tuscaron, was a collector of these ancient books on the occult. I had no idea.
The book I was looking for must have been especially prized though, because it was sealed away in a safe. The librarian explained to me that the book had been written by a Byzantine priest in the early 11th century, later resurfacing in Germany sometime in the 14th century. It was believed to have been brought there by survivors of Bishop Conrad of Halberstadt’s army during the fourth crusade, and then lost sometime thereafter.
Entitled The Nekrodeus de Antichronos, the book seemed to be some sort of description of various ancient monstrosities and rituals. It was grotesque, with illustrations only a diseased mind could come up with. Inside each page was a smaller laminated sheet of paper, containing the English translations. The foreword in the notes told me to take any translations with a grain of salt though, as the book was a bizarre mish-mash of Greek, Latin and Arabic sometimes even within the same sentence, making
translations dodgy. I guess one language didn’t have the words needed to explain some of the things in here.
Eventually, I came to the page of what must have been the Spider Queen that John had been raving about. I could understand why this thing had frightened him so badly. The illustration was simply a large dark triangular shape, with legs stabbing out of it at sharp, angry angles. The page had faded over the years, such that the details of the image were unclear, but the effect was unsettling none the less. The shape reminded me of shadows cast on the ceiling of my bedroom at night, of dark corners where nasty things could brood. Common childhood achluophobia, but still unnerving.
According to the translation, the Spider Queen is very similar to the Greek Fates, or Germanic Norns, in that she weaves destinies. The beast lives in a web formed by those destinies, in someplace called “the place between.” I can’t really figure out what that’s supposed to mean. It might have been a difficulty with the translation, or possibly just a very cryptic line of text. Still, I feel like this excursion was a success – I might actually be able to carry on a discussion with John now.