At least it had given Colin a place to start. He’d begun with the Bible. He’d pored through it, highlighting and dissecting. When the regular Bible hadn’t worked, he’d gotten an annotated one. He’d searched and scoured, but quickly found out that the path of righteousness was a dead end. Even his grandfather’s Book of Mormon had yielded little more than a fairy tale. He’d gone on to delve into Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, which all promised paths into heaven. But nothing spoke of a return trip. Hinduism came close, but it only spoke of the self, not someone else. The Satanic Bible was nothing but a farce, but at least it got him pointed in the right direction.
Much of what he’d found had seemed to be about drugged-out freaks looking for an excuse to have sex. It wasn’t all bad though; it was at one of these satanic orgies that Colin had met John Shayman. The man had talked a good game and was even been able to pull off several parlor tricks to impress the weak. The man hadn’t been there to partake in the festivities; he was there to recruit. He’d found a disciple in Colin, at least for a little while.
They’d met every Saturday night in a musty old storefront located in the downtown section of Fountain City. John had said he hoped to convert the place into a bookstore in order to have an outlet to spread the word. There had only been six of them then, but John had high hopes and an ego to match. This had mattered little to Colin. What mattered to Colin was the book. John had a book, which he claimed contained the secrets of life and death. One could live forever if they so chose. Colin didn’t; he just had one question, and the answer was yes.
Getting his hands on the book had been harder than he’d thought it would be. John took the thing everywhere. Like his grandfather though, Colin was a patient man. He’d bided his time and taken his opportunity when it presented itself.
It was a Saturday and the readings had just begun. Candles had been lit everywhere, sending shadows dancing across the walls. The meeting was interrupted by a jingle at the door. Two more people had accepted John’s invitation. Like the good host he was, John and the rest of the group had gone to the front to greet the new initiates. Everyone except Colin. John had left the book on the podium where he conducted his sermons. It was the first time Colin had seen the book alone and it had been all the time he needed.
He’d grabbed the book and run. A woman’s voice had screeched “Stop!” but he’d continued on. The woman yelling at him had been Vivica - John’s right hand disciple and, rumor had it, his enforcer. Colin had found this hard to believe at first. The woman was gorgeous, with piercing deep brown eyes. It hadn’t taken long for Colin to realize his mistake. There was something behind those brown eyes that seeped venom. Hers were the beautiful curves of a flaring cobra, and her strike was deadly.
The scream had been followed by a gunshot. The bullet had grazed Colin’s right arm. Another shot had gone wide and then Colin was out the door, on foot, with no place to go. He’d remembered a place he used to go when he was a kid. There was a drainage canal, which led into a tunnel that the city’s storm drains fed into. It was a place he’d sought out for solace as a child. Now, years later, he’d returned to it for sanctuary.
Colin knew that John’s minions would never give up their search, but one man alone in a city was hard to find. He’d made his way as best he could. He knew he could never return to his squalid apartment, but that mattered little. He had few possessions and anything he needed could be acquired again. A lifetime of obsession bears little fruit. Colin had survived off the misfortune of others. The first thing he needed was some bandages for his arm. The graze hadn’t been deep, but it was enough to soak his sleeve with crimson.
Many of the homes he’d entered hadn’t even been locked. People were surprisingly careless with their hard-earned belongings, although Colin would do little to disrupt this. Since he needed little, he took little. He would take a shower, help himself to a change of clothes, maybe some food from the refrigerator, but nothing more. He’d never left a mess and many of his victims wouldn’t even realize someone had been there. In one home, he’d found a nickel-plated Colt 45. and a box of ammunition. Being hunted the way he was, he’d thought it would come in handy.
It had taken a week of poring over the book to find what he was looking for and it had come in the way of a manifestation, a visitation if you will. Someone or something had answered the call and a deal had been struck.
Colin finished all of his preparations, then opened the book. He had spent the last two weeks rehearsing this very moment. If he hadn’t been doing it out loud, he was going over it in his head. He opened it to the right page and began to recite the words he knew by heart. Emotions began to stir within him, but nothing else seemed to change at first. Colin continued the verse, raising his voice into the night. Soon, oh so soon, he would be reunited with the one person who had claimed to love him. The one person who had always tried to be there for him.
Colin began to shiver as the room grew noticeably colder. Steam hissed from between his lips and still he chanted on at a fever pitch. The candles flickered, the flames growing taller. The yellow tips bent to East then the West, before drawing towards the center of the pentagram, pulled by some unseen force. The flames continued to burn, pulling closer and closer to the center of the mark.
All doubt left Colin as his moment approached. He stepped into the pentagram and immediately felt its warmth. Outside the star, frost was starting to form on the windows as all the room’s heat was drawn inward. Colin’s chills were replaced by beads of sweat that dripped from his forehead. He pulled an ordinary kitchen knife from his back pocket and gripped the blade in his right hand. In his left he held the handle. He pressed down and pulled, drawing a jagged line across his palm, grimacing at the pain. Keeping his hand balled into a fist, he turned it so that the rivulets of red could pour upon the spot of lost innocence. Blood for blood was what the ritual demanded. Now Colin stood back to watch.
It didn’t take long. The moment Colin’s blood dripped onto the form below, it began to writhe. The small nickel-sized hole in the sternum of the body slowly closed as the runnel of blood that had seeped out hours earlier seemed to pour back into the body. The form twitched and spasmed, then the convulsions began, thrashing the body with such force that Colin became concerned that it might explode as it hit the hard concrete floor.
Colin realized he was holding his breath and had to release it to keep from passing out. As soon as he let go of the air within him, the body stopped thrashing and the eyes flickered open. Colin sucked air back in again. The form lifted its head and gazed about. Recognition replaced fear and the body sat up, starring at Colin.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It appeared to be an adult version of his grandson. “Colin?” he questioned, looking through new eyes.
“Grandpa?”
“Colin, is that really you, son? Is it really you? Or is this just another vision to drive me even further insane?” the form asked in a voice that was not his own.
“It’s me, grandpa. It’s me. I brought you back.” Colin spoke with true sincerity in his voice.
“You did what? You brought me back? Brought me back from where?” his grandfather asked, alarmed.
“I brought you back from the dead, grandpa.”
“You did what? How? Why?” his grandfather quizzed.
“I brought you back for me, grandpa. It must have been horrible where you were.” Colin felt like a little kid for the first time in years.
“Horrible, yes, it was horrible. You cannot imagine the horrors I have endured. I have had my flesh shorn from my body and been beaten with the tail of a long black scorpion, only to have my flesh reapplied with staples and nails so it could be done all over again. I’ve been dipped in wax and burned like a human candle. I’ve been frozen and smashed into a million pieces. My all-too-feeling flesh was consumed by an acidic beast, only to be regurgitated so the pain could continue. All I have known since I died has been pain and suffering. All the while I asked why my Lord had forsa
ken me. Why did He allow me to suffer so? I was dedicated to the church. I paid my tithes. But now I see that I have not been forsaken. He has remembered me through my grandson. But how? How did you do this?”
“I made a deal, grandpa.”
“A deal?” His grandfather looked around and noticed the pentagram he was standing in. He noticed the black candles, and suddenly it dawned on him. “A deal? My boy. What have you done? You have just damned yourself to suffer like I have!”
“No grandpa.” Colin spoke timidly at first, and then pure hatred poured from his heart. “You damned me a long time ago, Grandpa. On that very spot. My blood spilled over when you took my innocence. Now it’s your turn. The suffering you have gone through will be nothing compared to what I have in store for you. And when that body gives out I have another one waiting for you.”
His grandpa looked over and saw a crumpled body on the floor. It was female, her glazed eyes said all that needed to be said about her condition. Colin didn’t have anything against the couple who had been living in his grandparents’ house. This was a necessary evil.
The foreign body now possessed by Colin’s grandfather struck a familiar smile. His once blue eyes were now green, but they still held his devilish charm. A charm Colin had felt one too many times. Colin proceeded to wipe that smile off of his grandfather’s face, one slice at a time.
Chris Stevens has lived in Southern California all of his life. He lives with his wife of twenty years and his two children. He has been writing most of his life which recently cost him his job at the Post Office for writing on the job. He has also been a police officer and served in the marines. Maybe now is the time for him to pursue his true calling.
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WRITERS CORNERED:
an interview with Chris Stevens
Where is home?
Yucaipa, Ca.
Are you a full-time writer?
I wish, although since I have been recently fired, maybe I am.
What inspired this story?
About 7 years ago some repressed memories came back to me about the sexual abuse I received at the hands of my father and grandfather from about the age of 4 until I was about 10. My grandfather was already dead so there was no way for me to get my revenge. This story allowed me to do that.
Do you believe in the biblical concept of hell? Do you believe there’s an afterlife, or that we are held accountable for our actions in life beyond the grave?
I’m not sure what I believe. I like to think that when we die it is however we think it will be.
Do you believe spells, curses and rituals hold real power, or is that purely the stuff of fiction?
I think it is pure hocus pocus.
Are you working on anything right now?
I’m finishing up an anthology for fantastic horror entitled Legends Untold.
Where can we find more of your work?
My work has appeared in work has appeared in Parabnormal Digest, The Absent Willow Review, Demon Minds, and Fantastic Horror.
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GHOST LOVE SCORE
By Peter Damien
He had zip-tied Charlotte's ankle to the metal skeleton beneath the car seat, and she had spent all of the first day of their unending drive moving her foot back and forth and up and down, rubbing against the little plastic. It was no thicker than a straw but may as well have been made of solid steel for all the good her movements did. Yet she kept wiggling and moving her foot. She rubbed the flesh raw, and then rubbed it off and blood ran down her pale ankle and left her bare foot and the zip-tie slick and red, but even that did no good. In the movies, the blood provided lubricant and the captive slipped themselves out of their bonds easily, but that was not the case here. Here, she was only getting out if she severed the bones in her foot from the bones in her leg. If she could have reached, she would have done just that, if necessary with her teeth.
If there was pain from the small equator of raw flesh and blood, she did not feel it. She went mad, that first day, a madness the pain could not penetrate. Her mind filled with rage and despair, the animalistic panic at being trapped like this, being snatched away. What was left of her mind was filled with those last few moments: the sound of scuffling, the sound of Eric shouting at her to run, goddammit, get the hell outta here, get the – and then the sound of his voice being cut off by a thunderclap explosion which left her ears ringing. A gunshot. The only sound after that had been the sick thud of dead meat hitting the asphalt. Then hands that were not Eric's had grabbed her and shoved her into the car. The man who took her had said his name was Simon, and then he said nothing else.
He drove while, beside him, she sank beneath the black waves of grief and insanity.
On the second day, her ankle hurt badly and she felt it with every pulse of blood that her heart pushed through her body, which it did at jackhammer pace since the panic had not left, even if the madness had abated. The meaty thud and the gunshot still looped through her mind, and she began to sob brokenly.
In the seat next to her, Simon eventually told her to stop. He said it with disinterest, as if he had been expecting this and found it a chore. When she did not stop, when more hours had passed, he reached over and grabbed a handful of her long, black hair, yanking her head back. She didn't see his hand coming, of course. The pain was staggering and she gasped, shocked into silence.
“Seriously, shut up,” he said. He didn't sound angry. He sounded annoyed. It was the tone of voice someone might use to scold a small dog who wouldn't stop barking. Then his hand was gone.
That second night, Simon stopped the car and got out, locking it behind him. She heard his footsteps crunch away, and then nothing but silence. For a long time, Charlotte just sat there, still trying not to cry. Then she began fumbling around the inside of the car, looking for any way to escape, anything she could use to kill him...or herself. But there was nothing. The door had no handle, the lock had been filed away into the depth of the door. The floor was bare, and so was every compartment she jammed her hand into. Each time she tried to move, she was reminded that her ankle was trapped and a piercing pain shot up her leg. She was so well anchored, she couldn't even put a finger on his door. Claustrophobia threatened to roll over her and smother her. Madness lurked nearby, waiting to come back.
She didn't know where she was, either, and that was just as maddening. Where had they stopped? Where had he gone? Had he simply stopped the car on the side of the road, somewhere in the Nevada desert and walked away? Leaving her to starvation and insanity? To cook in the heat like a side of meat in an oven? Where had he gone?
She wondered if she would be going less mad, if she would be able to escape, if she had her eyesight. If only she could see. It had been decades since her eyesight had gone, and plenty of years since she had accepted the blindness. It had been so long since she had missed it as badly as she did now. But the world was as black and featureless now, in this nightmare, as it had been during the good years, the happy years, with Eric.
She cried a little. It was the only sound in the car. She hid her mouth with her hand and wiped away tears the moment they formed. She didn’t know who she was hiding her crying from, but hid it anyway.
A sound of crunching gravel, then the door opened and Simon dropped into the driver's seat. He reeked of hamburger and fries, cigarette smoke, cheap beer. A small bag fell into her lap and she grasped at it. It was smooth and it crinkled.
“Chips,” he said. “Eat up. Long drive ahead of us, so you gotta keep some strength up.”
She didn't eat them. She let them slip to the floor a little while later. Simon made no comment. He just drove on, through the night.
On the third day, she went away. Simple as that.
It was something she had learned from Eric; something he had taught her how to do. Eric had loved to teach. Except that didn't quite convey his wild enthusiasm. He’d delighted in things and shared them and enjoyed the reactions of others. Whether it was booze, TV shows
, stupid pictures on the internet, fine cuisine or baffling flavors of potato chips, he’d loved to try things and bring others along for the adventure. Sporadic. That's what his mom had called him, but Charlotte had loved it. There were never dull moments, only electric ones and the restful spaces between them.
He had taught her to go away, and she did.
It was a meditation technique, one of his few interests that had lasted longer than a few weeks (other long-term interests had been tea, good books, running...and her). She focused, she really focused on putting away the world around her: the endless, burning pain in her ankle, the hot and dusty car rattling around her. She visualized herself walking down little stone steps, and she felt the roughness of each stone under bare feet. She stepped into a small pool of cold water, and she felt it against her ankles, forced herself to feel it. And then, breathing and calm and settled, she pictured where she wanted to be.
Something Wicked #19 (March 2012) Page 4