by Sam Zadgan
Charlene floated towards Steve Cooling; both men were rooted to the ground, unable to move, either through fear or some kind of pressure holding them there. She whispered quietly into Steve’s ear and floated back into the house, followed by Mr Green.
“What did she say, Steve?” the Reverend quickly asked.
Steve lifted his head, and tightened his grip on the heavy log of wood in his hand. “She said you need to die,” Steve responded with a calm and dead look in his eyes.
With that Steve swung the wood and connected with the side of the Reverend’s head. The Reverend was surprised by the attack and had little time to defend or ready himself for the impact. He was knocked to the ground, with blood trickling out from the gash on his temple.
When the Reverend woke up he was in the church, surrounded by the damned misfits of the cult, and at his feet stood Mr Green and Charlene. He tried to move, but his arms and legs were tied and bound to large steel hooks protruding from the floor. Looking beyond the crowd he saw five grotesque statues arranged in a circle, but apart from the unnatural appearance, he noticed each one had either a hole or something missing from the structure. But his analysis of the statues was interrupted as Steve emerged from the crowd and stood between Charlene and Mr Green with a large knife in hand.
Charlene laid her hand on Steve’s back and ushered him towards the Reverend. Steve kneeled by his side, as Charlene spoke to the cult.
“We praise our god, Ahriman, for providing this town and the Reverend to complete our church and homage to our protectors. By his wisdom we have been led here, and by his minions’ protection we will stay here and build a world dedicated to his will.”
The Reverend meanwhile was having a myriad of thoughts running through his head, trying to look for ways he could escape. He knew what his fate would be, but wasn’t sure his God and devotion would secure his escape. He thought, maybe this was his sacrifice to the world. He was chosen by his God, and his death would not be in vain and would lead to this dastardly cult being found out and ridden from this world.
Even with his religious rationale, his deepest instincts of fear and anger were still struggling to listen to his reason.
“What are you going to do with me, you whore?” The Reverend finally broke his silence.
Charlene smiled, not taking any offence at the Reverend’s words, as she was beyond such trivial insults.
“Reverend, you have been chosen by Ahriman, as was Steve Cooling. You two will seal the future of our town, community and our immortality. You will be a part of us forever.”
“What the hell do you mean? You’ve bewitched Steve, and you’re going to sacrifice me to some heathen god…”
But before the Reverend could continue his theory, Charlene took a few steps forward and interrupted him.
“Yes, you will be sacrificed, but not in vain. You see, our protectors in this church need life, and you will provide that.” She walked over to each statue as she explained the ghastly plans for the Reverend; first the goat, then the dragon, followed by the bull, the bat and finally the serpent.
“Our spirit protector will need your heart. Our fire protector will need your lungs. Our earth protector will need your torso. Our air protector will need your arms, and finally, Reverend, our water protector, which I’m sure you are familiar with by now, will need your mind. You see, you are so very important to us, Reverend, much more than you may think…”
“You can’t do that. I will not give my soul. I am a man of God, the God that you will bow down to when…argh!”
The Reverend’s protest was short lived, and ended when Steve thrust the knife into the Reverend’s chest and a small amount of blood gargled in the Reverend’s throat.
Charlene chuckled, along with Mr Green, at the man’s feeble attempt at threatening them. Mr Green stepped over to Steve and whispered in his ear, instructing him further, and then turned to the Reverend.
“Poor Reverend Larwock, we don’t want your soul. That’s worthless to us, we just need your body. Your soul is tainted by the false god you worshipped and devoted yourself to. Steve, on the other hand, is pure of your depraved way of life. He is one of us now.”
Steve’s face and eyes remained unchanged, no emotion, his actions were not his own, gripping the knife handle again with further purpose. He watched the Reverend fade away and his eyes slowly lose their lively gaze.
Steve proceeded to cut open the Reverend’s chest, breaking the rib cage open, revealing his heart and lungs. Charlene stepped towards the corpse of the Reverend and reached into his chest cavity and ripped out the lungs and heart and handed them out. The members handed them down the line to Mr Green as he placed them into the statues, where they would be stitched in.
Steve finally drove the knife into the Reverend’s throat; the blood gushed and sprayed up onto Steve’s face.
A book is found
~
Nomads from northern India made their way to Europe and southern Spain in the early fifteenth century. That group was the first of the nomads that the Europeans would call gypsies; riding through the lands in caravans with rumours of evil and misfortune following them. The locals never liked to see the gypsy caravans rolling into their towns and villages. They were afraid of that which they did not know, and gypsies represented a people with ideals that were alien to them. They had no permanent home and they carried knowledge that threatened the locals’ way of life.
It was in such a town that adventurers and scholars Benjamin and James Everette stumbled upon a group of travellers who had stationed themselves on the outskirts of Malaga, a flourishing city in the south of Spain. The brothers were taking a week to recover from their recent travels and stocking up on supplies before moving north. Their aim was to make their way north-east to Seville, and settle there in the other thriving Spanish city.
But how Benjamin and James came to know this group was a product of survival, more than seeking friendship. Benjamin and James were in the area investigating some spectacular witchcraft allegations that had been all but ignored by the Spanish authorities. In Spain, the main focus, which would later lead to the trials in Basque, were in northern Spain, not the south.
When they arrived in the adjoining town of Malaga, they were not met by the welcome they had hoped. In fact the Arabs that ruled Malaga were not forthcoming to Christian visitors. Tensions between the two religions were at a high, just prior to Christian rule in the late 1400s.
It all erupted on one night when James was caught taking a keen eye on one of the town elder’s daughters. His casual glance was taken as a lustful one and the men beat him in that house and both Benjamin and James were summarily driven out of town.
They took refuge in a little clearing, with Benjamin attending to his brother’s wounds. There, a young lady from behind the trees approached the couple. She spoke some Spanish, as did Benjamin, and they conversed shortly as Benjamin explained the situation. She hurriedly ushered them to their campsite, offering them medical assistance and a tent to stay in for the night.
That night, as James slept early to recover from his severe beating, Benjamin sat in the next tent sharing dinner with the elder of the clan. He spoke Indian, which Benjamin had a conversational knowledge of. He deduced that the group was of Persian descent, which had escaped, like many, to northern India once the Islamic conquest took Persia. They had maintained the Zoroastrian heritage and still partook in the rituals of the old religion.
Whilst in conversation, Benjamin could not help but notice a small wooden box that sat in the corner of the tent with a disproportionate lock on it. After a short while Benjamin asked the elder about the box, and why such an elaborate lock was used. The answer was not expected as the elder elaborated.
“Inside this box, my friend, is an evil book, taken by my forefathers out of our homeland. We have sworn to protect the world from its contents and those who would use it against the good people of the world. That is all you need to know about it,” he said sternly.
The next day was a different story. Benjamin woke to the edge of a sword against his throat. He flinched with fear as he opened his eye to the sight of the elder at his throat. That flinch was enough for the sharp edge of the sword to make a razor sharp cut on his throat, drawing a drop of blood. He stopped and in shock asked for an explanation.
The sum of it was that the book was missing, as was his brother James. Benjamin had no idea what to make of the mystery or how this was going to be resolved with his life intact.
“I am as mystified as you are, as to my brother’s disappearance,” Benjamin exclaimed.
“Your brother’s presence is of less concern, compared to the dangers he will encounter in that book. If he has stolen the book to make a pact, I fear we will have no choice but to destroy him.” The reply from the elder was heartless and firm.
“I will go with you, let me help you find him. I will retrieve the book for you, please, let me talk to him and end this ordeal peacefully,” Benjamin pleaded with the elder.
“Very well, you will join us, but we will decide on your brother, if he remains sane of mind,” the elder responded.
With that they quickly got a group together and set out to find his brother. They split into teams of three with the elder and his son accompanying Benjamin on their trek east, towards Malaga.
Approximately an hour passed as the three men made their way through the path in the forest, before coming to the same clearing that the brothers had retreated to the night before. There they found James, or whom they thought was James. Benjamin laid eyes on his brother, but for all intents and purposes it could have been a stranger. James had completely healed, but his eyes, tongue and intentions were definitely not his own.
James stood in the clearing, oblivious to the presence of of the three men, deeply focused on the book, which he had opened. The elder looked upon the renewed man with anger and fear, whilst his son was retreating in fear of the evil presence he felt. Benjamin was at a loss for words as he cautiously called out to his brother.
“James. James?” Benjamin’s tone was apologetically unthreatening.
The man who was previously James, whilst looking down at the book, flicked his hands at the men, as if shooing a fly, motioning them to leave him. The elder, however, had a duty to fulfill and would not be denied his responsibilities. He mustered up his strength and took aim with his sword and ran at James. Benjamin had no time to stop him but he yelled out at the hasty aggression of the elder.
“STOP! No…”
But Benjamin’s fear for his brother was soon calmed as James turned to the old man and opened his mouth wide. He appeared to scream but there was no noise; in its place a black mist emitted from his mouth, and engulfed the elder. The man collapsed to his knees and fell to the ground, motionless. The elder’s son had seen enough, and instead of taking revenge he ran back towards the campsite.
Benjamin stood still with fear, alone with a man that resembled his brother, but was definitely under an outside influence. Benjamin was an educated man, and one of a few people who wholly believed in science. Although he would pay lip service to the powers that be, that he still believed in the all mighty God, deep down he put all of it down to superstition and weak-minded people. But this was a complete revelation, and unless his brother had become an illusionist overnight, Benjamin had no explanation for what he was seeing. All he did know, was this was evil and everything he thought he knew was no more.
When James brought his brother Benjamin back to London a month later, he had no choice but to commit him to an asylum for mental evaluation. The staff and doctors at the asylum had seen this kind of behaviour before, and put it down to an infestation of some kind of legion that had impacted his mind.
After a few courses of leeches proved to be ineffective in treating this infection, Benjamin was put in a cell for his own protection. Caged like a prisoner, his madness would become increasingly worse.
The guards in the ward would often sit outside his cell, unbeknown to him, and listen to his wild stories as a form of amusement. Although some could not help the fear creeping into their bones as Benjamin would tell horrifying tales.
The guards would tell each other about these nightmarish tales and would pass on these mad stories, about a man who could command a serpent-shaped black mist. He would take lives and destroy towns, commanding demons to do his bidding throughout southern Spain.
Although the events in the Malaga area proved to be true, the staff put it down to his madness finding some real events to hang stories on to convince him of the truth. But the claims were ridiculous in nature, especially his recantation of the death of a group of gypsies.
He recalled the story every night in fact. The group of gypsies was moving in haste to escape their fate from the mystical man. The possessed man, who only wanted evil, finally tracked them down and drew upon demons of the underworld, under the influence of the Zoroastrian evil god, Ahriman. He had the members of the travelling group stripped of their clothes and with his will hung their bodies from the trees, using the tree vines as nooses and skinning their bodies with a sword he had found. Their skin was burnt and their fat was consumed in liquid form to fortify his allegiance to his god and commit his descendants to the service of evil.
The way back
~
1. Unexplained phone call
He put the phone down on the bed side table, agitated and confused at the same time. Not only had the call come too early in the morning for him, but the claim the woman made was unexpected and not welcome. Stewart thought about returning to sleep, he still had another two hours before he had to ready himself to teach the first class of the day, Applied Mathematics 101 at Sydney University, a subject he wasn’t looking forward to this term. But the phone call had woken him to the point where it was useless to return to bed. So he headed to the shower and took his time with his morning routine.
Looking into his bowl of cereal, he couldn’t stop wondering whether there was any truth to the woman’s claim, or if it was part of some kind of psychotic prank. But why prank him? His father wasn’t anybody special. The news of his disappearance didn’t really raise any alarms for the authorities and only brought sadness to the few family members and friends. He checked his phone again, looking through the calls that had been made to him, and he found her phone number. His hand hovered over the number, wanting to call, but not, all at the same time. He took another milk-filled scoop of his cereal, and pressed the call button.
“Hi, is this Stewart?” the voice on the other end answered, but Stewart was not so fast to respond.
He had hoped that she wouldn’t know it was him, at least not until he had time to talk first and feel out the conversation, but now she was in control.
“Yes, I…” he sheepishly responded.
He was cut off, a tone of excitement came from the woman’s voice on the phone, grateful that her call was returned and not ignored.
“I’m so glad you called back. Before I tell you anything, I want you to know that I am sorry for your loss, and I’m not doing this to bring back sad memories, I just want to tell you the truth, and if you want we can find his murderers.” She rattled through the introduction as if it had been rehearsed a few times.
“Murderers? He wasn’t killed! He died because he was lost in the woods,” Stewart shot back.
He was convinced as were the police about the demise of his father 25 years ago. His father’s body was never found, but his car was found driven off the edge of the road some fifteen kilometres west of Bowral, a tourist town in the south west of Sydney. The forest in that area was thick and unforgiving, for a man with no s
kill in surviving, and after sustaining injuries from the accident it was a foregone conclusion that he had died there. Some clothes were recovered near the river, which led to the conclusion that his body was swept away in the river. By police estimations, they had started the search approximately three weeks after the accident, which was long enough to cease the search and investigation.
“Look, I’ve been researching this case for about five years now, and I am absolutely sure I know what happened. Can we meet today to talk about this over coffee? I don’t want to do this over the phone.” Her voice circled through his head, however, he was still in deep thought.
“Yes. I’ll finish at two, why don’t you meet me at Toby’s Estate, the café just off Broadway?” he finally responded.
The woman agreed and hung up, leaving Stewart to go even further into thought about what this could mean. He was not sure if he believed her; his curiosity, however, was too strong to ignore.
After his class, Stewart wasted no time in leaving the university and making his way to the coffee shop for the rendezvous he had been looking forward to for the last few hours. He stepped into the café, suddenly realising that he had no idea what she looked like, so he called her again, and to his surprise a young strawberry blonde-haired woman in the corner answered her phone. She was attractive without being glamorous, but Stewart was still quite taken by her appearance, which helped her cause.
“I’m so glad you made it, I was thinking you wouldn’t come.” She had a genuinely grateful voice.
They sat down at the table, but there was an awkward silence, neither knowing how to begin the conversation, until Stewart broke the silence.
“So tell me what you know, Shannon,” he said.
Shannon began to reveal the findings of her investigations, with supporting documents and newspaper clippings.