by John Everson
He read dozens of silly spells and foolish theories about spiritual creatures still bound to the archaic, simplistic notions of heaven or hell. Most people in the last one hundred years who really believed in the existence of ethereal creatures still categorized them as demons or angels. They remained locked in a concept that had been simplistic a thousand years ago.
But Darin continued to explore the myths and beliefs of many cultures. And in the end, he had stumbled on the true beginning of his path when he had found an old, hand-bound book very close to home.
A book covered in dust and sand, hidden beneath the floorboards of one of the sleeping rooms of the old mission. It was called The Book of the Curburide. He pulled it off the shelf, and smiled as he leafed through the first yellowed pages of Chapter One. The author was anonymous, but the text held more knowledge of the true universe than virtually any other he’d come across.
The rewards of a successful Calling are riches and hedonistic fulfillment beyond any man’s wildest dreams. But the path to union with the Curburide is long. He who chooses this path must be committed to the Calling in both heart and soul; there is no turning back. To waver on the path means not only death, but eternal damnation. Once the Calling has begun, and first blood spilled, the caller belongs to the demons called Curburide. If the Calling is successfully completed, they will also belong to the Caller – a mutual symbiotic bond is forged. But if the Curburide detect weakness, doubt or insincerity in the Caller before that bond is complete, beware…
He had studied the book for months. And he had prepared his Calling carefully. He would not be taken and slaughtered during the first moments of the ritual, as the Curburide demons came through to our realm, drawn by his ritual but not yet bound by any allegiance to him.
Since reading the book, he had found more references to the Curburide in the backwaters of other occult texts. He knew the names of some of the demons who had touched our world over the centuries. He would start with them; they would want to return. And he would pledge to help them.
With certain conditions.
Darin set the bags he was holding down for a minute and took out a keychain from his pocket to release the padlock from the old wooden door. Then he flipped on the light switch and a bulb sprang to life below. He’d rigged the switch to pull from a large battery, since the electricity had been turned off to the site years ago. It was a lot easier than lighting candles every time he had to go to the basement.
Darin descended the steps slowly, lost in thought as he considered his plans. In his studies, he had come across all sorts of rituals for demon calling. Most involved human sacrifice. Some revolved around torture – there was a documented Curburide calling that involved the sacrifice of victims in five different geographic locations – a sort of murderous map.
There was the Ritual of the Twenty-One Cuts, where the victim was slowly sliced in various portions of the anatomy until the final cut pierced the heart. And there was The Ritual of the Thirteenth, which involved impregnating thirteen women, sacrificing twelve of them and leaving the progeny of the thirteenth to serve as the flesh-bound portal for a demon to incorporate itself into in this world. That ritual offered the demon a foothold of near-permanence in our realm, though it also consigned the creature to several years of helplessness while its host human body grew.
Darin planned to use a different ritual. The book described the Star of Death ceremony that placed five victims in a circle, their feet to the center. When the circle was completed and their blood flowed and connected all the way around in a crimson moat, the life energy that pooled at the center would be so strong that it would allow a door between worlds to be opened.
Darin turned the corner at the base of the stairs and opened a door to a small, dark room. There he set one of the small lunch bags he’d been carrying down at the feet of a woman who lay sleeping there, head on a burlap sack bunched into a pillow. A chain secured her by the wrist to a heavy bolt he’d installed in the stone wall. He left the door open as he stepped back out into the hall so the light could get in and then repeated the action in another room, where another woman lay sleeping.
The woman in the fourth room was not sleeping. When he opened the door, she sat with her back to the wall. Her face was streaked with sweat; dark hair was plastered to her neck. Her hands gripped the chain, stretching it tight across the edge of a stone shelf that jutted from one wall. When she saw Darrin, she dropped the chain, but he had already seen what she was doing. The chain was bright silver in one spot, the edge of the rock she’d been rubbing it against was white compared to the rest of the shelf’s yellowish caste.
She was trying to file down the chain while he was gone. She thought with enough filing, she could eventually weaken and break the chain to escape.
Darin smiled. Let her try. She wasn’t going to be in here long enough for it to matter. All she was going to be able to do was blister her hands and dull the edge of the rock.
He dropped the bag at her feet and didn’t say a word.
“Wake up,” he called to the sleeping women across the hall. “I am only going to leave your doors open for a few minutes, so if you want to be able to see what your lunch is, now’s the time, while I bring you some water.”
From one of the rooms, the sound of weeping began. From another, the crumple of a paper bag opening.
“Let me go,” the woman said from behind him. The voice was cold. Demanding. Not afraid at all. Good. She’d bring a powerful energy to the sacrifice. Darin had not read anything to suggest it, but he theorized that a powerful life force was more useful in such a ritual than the docile, beaten soul of sheep.
“Soon,” he promised.
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
Darin turned around and looked at her. Her eyes were bright in the shadowy room. Her face was flushed. He could see her chest rising and falling. Her T-shirt stuck to the curves of her chest, showing every breath. She didn’t look away, demanding an answer.
“I want everything you have to give,” he answered. Then he walked away from her, to gather the deep steel cups he’d bought at the secondhand shop on Guadalupe Street. He filled them with water twice a day; he needed to make sure his sacrifices stayed well-hydrated. Because ultimately, he needed them to bleed.
Strong and steady.
Tonight he would go out and find himself the fifth woman.
The final feet to walk the circle around his dark star.
And then things would really start to get interesting.
CHAPTER 8
CHEYENNE OPENED THE BAG and quickly downed the peanut butter and jelly sandwich within. Then she ate the apple, and drank every drop of the water the asshole had left her.
The first time he’d brought food, she’d considered not touching it. Maybe it was drugged, or poisoned… but… he already had her chained up. What would be the point?
She needed all of her strength if she had any hope of getting out of this. She still didn’t know what this was, but she didn’t expect that letting her walk away alive at the end of it all was part of the asshole’s plan.
Cheyenne picked up the chain with her free hand, and shifted her butt over until she sat next to the rock ledge again. People had dug their way out of prisons with a spoon. She didn’t have a spoon, but she had friction.
You worked with what you had.
CHAPTER 9
JOE HAD DONE stakeouts before. It wasn’t just cops who hung back and kept an eye out. A good reporter knew when to hole up, sit tight, and just… wait.
The tough part about staking out the old mission was that there was no place to hide. There were no buildings for miles, and the road traversed a straight, flat area that basically was the bottom of a valley. No big hunks of rock or other buildings to ditch the car behind. And he’d seen the way the car had circled his own when he’d parked there last. He couldn’t leave the Hyun
dai on the side of the road without attracting attention, and he sure couldn’t walk from town out to the mission. It’d take him a couple hours or more on foot.
But there were always ways. He didn’t have to use his car to get here.
Joe pulled the rented motor scooter down the slight hill behind the mission, and laid it down near some small jutting rocks. Then he gathered a few blooms of sagebrush and laid them on top. It wasn’t a perfect camouflage, but nobody should be staring down the hillside behind the mission anyway.
He was more concerned about keeping himself invisible. After dark, it would be easy, but in the meantime…
He’d worn a sand-colored shirt and light jeans, and planned to lie down near the bike behind the mission for the next hour or so until it was dark. After that, he might move up and hang closer to the building itself; it would be easier to stay out of sight then.
Was this exercise completely stupid?
He hoped not.
Arnie had been adamant that there still was a group that used this place to call demons. And he’d been equally insistent that there would be activity this weekend. It was a celestial “event” weekend – the sort that always brought out occultists, Satanists, druids, witches, call them what you would. The people who believed in the thin spots between worlds always felt that events like lunar equinoxes and solstices and comets crossing low over the earth’s atmosphere were important; they claimed that these astronomical things made for astrological ripples.
And on Saturday night, actually at dawn, there would be a selenelion – a total eclipse of the moon at the moment of the sun’s rising. For a brief moment, the earth would be directly between the sun and moon – the three celestial bodies forming an exact 180-degree line in space.
Joe had heard the weather man talking about this cosmic alignment as a rare event on the radio this morning. He was actually pretty excited to see it himself; usually when they talked about equinoxes and shooting stars and whatnot, the sky seemed to always be filled with dark clouds where he was. But here, in the high desert, the sky was almost always clear at night. He should have a great view; if he could stay awake all night to see it. Assuming he wasn’t inside the old mission in the midst of stopping some crazy ritual at the time.
But first things first – he needed somebody to show up.
That didn’t take long.
The sun was just setting when an old silver Ford pulled up to the front of the Birchmir. A dark-haired man got out, reached into the back of the car and then walked to the front of the mission carrying a bunch of brown paper bags. He disappeared inside and Joe considered whether to follow. Not yet, he thought. Something told him that the man wasn’t staying. Joe shifted his weight from one side to the other in the dirt, and settled in to bide his time. He pulled out his phone and clicked the button.
8:13 p.m. It would be full dark soon.
He waited.
The breeze slipped over his back and the brush around him moved faintly. It felt good after a warm day, but in a couple more hours it would feel chilly out here. The temperatures would drop from the 80s during the day to the 50s at night. He’d brought a jacket for just that reason, though it had been too hot to wear when he’d set out. It was tied around his waist, and he’d be putting it on if he had to stay out here too much longer.
The stillness of the landscape in front of him was suddenly broken again by the quick steps of the man. The guy looked to be average height, maybe a little overweight. Thinning dark hair. Really nondescript, Joe thought, as the guy pulled the car door open and slipped inside. In a minute, all that remained to tell of his visit was a faint cloud of dust in the air.
Well, that and whatever he’d left inside. The guy hadn’t returned with the bags he’d taken inside, Joe had noted. He waited for a minute, and then scanned the road in both directions. There appeared to be nobody for miles.
Joe pushed himself off the ground and brushed the dust off his jeans as he began to walk towards the mission.
He was curious to find out what was in those bags.
CHAPTER 10
IF YOU WANTED something done right, you had to do it yourself. That had been Cheyenne’s credo since she was thirteen. She had cheated sometimes in school, to get by easily – until she’d realized that she could actually score better without trying too hard than she did when cribbing off the girl next to her. That was just the first of many realizations that it was better to depend on yourself than someone else. She’d given up on her mother before she left junior high. If she waited for mom to pick her up at a friend’s house, or after school, she’d wait on the curb for hours. So she made her own arrangements to get home. And sometimes she just didn’t bother going home until it was night. By then her mom was a bit angry, if she managed to remember that she had a daughter who was MIA. But half the time she was too busy chatting up her boyfriend or getting stoned to realize Cheyenne was even gone.
So she learned how to take care of herself early. And completely. Guys learned pretty quick not to fuck with her. Unless she wanted them to. She was called everything from headstrong to haughty, but she didn’t care.
Cheyenne made her own way the way she wanted.
Which was why she was really pissed right now that her wrist was shackled to a stone wall. Wasn’t anybody who was going to come bail her out; she couldn’t sit back and cry hoping for some knight in shining armor to come to her rescue.
That seemed to be the answer of a couple other girls here. She’d called out to them a few times. It was hard to hear through the doors, but the standing hope among the others seemed to be that a boyfriend or husband or the police would turn up. And voila, the hideous day would be saved.
Bullshit, Cheyenne said to that. Maniac’s going to slaughter us one by one. She didn’t say that out loud. No need to freak anyone out down the hall any more than they already were. But that was God’s truth, she was sure as shit it was.
And Cheyenne didn’t intend to be hanging around when the asshole turned up with his machete. Or switchblade. Or pistol. Or rifle. Or whatever he was going to use to finally do them in. He wasn’t just going to leave them down here to grow old on peanut butter sandwiches, that was for sure.
She rubbed the chain across the edge of a rock ledge for a couple hours after he left. She heard occasional cries and screams of frustration from down the hall and shook her head. Idiots. They were wasting time and energy instead of trying to get themselves out of here.
That said.
She ran her fingers over the metal in the chain link she’d been filing. She’d worn the metal down a bit, for sure. But at this rate, it would take days to break the link.
Something told her she didn’t have days.
Cheyenne stopped grinding the chain and stood up. Her shoulders ached and her stomach was already growling. A sandwich and an apple wasn’t enough to support this much of a workout!
She yanked a couple times on the chain, to no avail. The eyehook that held the chain was mounted on a circle of metal held fast to the rock by four screws; and the rock wasn’t going to give.
But…
Cheyenne traced her fingers around the metal cup he’d left her filled with water. And then she stood and felt at the four screws that bolted the eyehook into the rock wall. Which held the chain.
Sometimes you had to be imaginative when you needed a tool. Right now, she could use a hacksaw. But a screwdriver would work too. Of course, she didn’t actually have a screwdriver. Not per se. But you made do with what you had.
Cheyenne drank all of the water; she had been going to ration it to last awhile, but she needed the cup and couldn’t waste the water.
Then she stepped up on the rock ledge and strained to reach the screws at the base of the chain. She pushed the edge of the cup into the slot in the one at the bottom and pushed. Righty tight-y, lefty loose-y, her grandpa had always said. She used that silly rh
yme now to be sure she was trying to budge it the right way.
She put both of her hands on the cup, clattering the chain against the wall. She used the handle as her lever, and pushed. Something moved, and she grinned. This was going to be easier than she thought.
And then just as quickly, she frowned as she touched the cup.
The screw hadn’t moved, the edge of her cup had bent. The one side was creased together.
Shit.
Cheyenne stepped back down to the floor. The edge of the cup had creased in the direction she’d been trying to turn. A wave of defeat hit her then, and she could feel her arms shaking. She was exhausted. She’d wasted hours trying to file down the chain and now her idea of unscrewing the chain holder from the wall was just as futile.
She sat down on the stone ledge and felt her eyes well. So much for all her DIY bravado. She might as well be whining and crying with the other women in this dungeon. She wasn’t getting out under her own steam, that much was clear.
That the kind of weak-ass baby bitch you are? A voice taunted in her head. I thought you were better than that.
“There’s wishful thinking, and there’s reality,” she murmured.
There’s excuses and rationalization, the voice fired back.
Cheyenne took a deep breath. “Just what am I supposed to do?”
Try until you can’t try anymore. You lose then? Then you did your best. You ain’t done your best yet.
Cheyenne took another breath, and then stood up on the ledge again. She pressed the creased part of the cup into the groove this time; maybe with the reinforcement – two edges of the cup working as one – she’d have better luck. She pressed the cup down with one hand, and pressed gently on the handle with the other.