by John Everson
“Yeah, probably,” she said, but there was no fear in her voice.
“Cindy, that monster killed your boyfriend! And who knows how many other people!”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He didn’t kill James—his mother did. And James isn’t dead, not really.”
She looked off into the dark of the cavern.
“I can feel him with me, even now.”
Joe shook her by the shoulders, truly afraid now. How could he protect her if she gave herself willingly to the creature?
She looked at him then, eyes glowing bright with excitement.
“He throws away their bodies, but He saves their souls. I’ve talked with them. So many of them. James, Bernadette, Bob, Bill…kids, old people, travelers…They’re all there, inside Him. Sometimes, in the dark on top of the cliff, He lets James come to me, talk to me…. I love talking with him again.”
Her voice trailed off and Joe stood up.
This was crazy. She was crazy. How could she rationalize talking to a murderous spirit as if it were some kind of gentle lover?
“Because I am.”
He jumped. Whirled around, peering into the dark outlines of the tunnels leading out of this diamond palace. Cindy still sat, oblivious to his fear.
“Over there,” the voice directed, and Joe felt his head drawn to stare at the tunnel farthest to the left of the one from where they had entered the cavern.
“I believe you’ll find what you’re looking for in there. I’ll be back shortly. I’m still wrapping up my business elsewhere. Enjoy your stay.”
“What is it?” Cindy asked.
Joe’s heart was beating like a jackhammer.
“Did you hear Him?”
“No,” she said. “I haven’t talked to Him today. Did He say something to you?” She smiled. “Oh, Joe, that’s great! You can hear him too!”
Joe shook his head and stepped away from her. The tunnel he’d been drawn to see led to a small side room. And there he saw what the spirit had led him here to find.
A book.
The room was really a closet carved in the gray rock, barely five feet wide by five feet deep. There was a thick wood shelf set in the wall and on it, a dark leather-bound book. The dust hadn’t been disturbed in ages.
Forgetting Cindy completely for a moment, he reached out to touch it.
The cover opened with an audible creak; the pages, Joe saw, would never ripple smartly again. The cool dampness of the mountain had gummed and stuck much of the book to itself, but with trembling fingers, he gently tried to open the cover page without tearing it.
A piece of the top of the page ripped away from itself, glued by time to the page beneath. But he got the two separated, and read the blurred calligraphy beneath with wonder. And awe.
A Journal
by Broderick Terrel
Begun this 21st of April, in the year of Our Lord, 1893.
The hand had flair, a flourish that Joe found he admired. People didn’t spend much time paying attention to penmanship in this age of printers and computers.
Fascinated, he coaxed open the next page and started reading the diary of the man who’d founded this town over a century before.
It began:
I write these words as a warning and an explanation for my actions. The night is a long and cold thing, even in the heavy heat of summer. It hides the life of things best thought dead. But death is not the end. And so long as men realize that, so long as they stay true to their faith and leave the seductive fangs of the darkness to their own empty ends, then they will live long and fruitful lives. Kiss the creatures of the night, though, and know your doom.
The entry ended there.
What the fuck was this moron writing about? Joe thought, shaking his head to himself.
He skipped ahead a few pages, and then carefully pried two more pages apart. The yellowed vellum separated in rippled, discolored leafs and Joe marveled again at the date. This was primary research material here! The kind of stuff they kept in the rare-book rooms at university libraries.
June 23, 1893
As I suspected, the creature will not let up. Once I revealed my intentions to the spirit, it has not ceased to taunt me with them. But how can I ignore it for long? I know what is to come. And what will come will kill my town. My people.
But can I make a deal with a devil to save them?
And at what price?
Joe pried again, turning the journal a few pages further.
August 1, 1893
The night is long when no ships are due. Terrel survives on ocean commerce, but still, only one or two dockings come to us per week from outside. The rest of that time, my light house shines on empty ocean. Well, empty to most. But I have been below. I have walked with the sirens and the fey, feral creatures that lurk just beyond mortal sight. Why? Why was I gifted to see these things? I have written it before, but still it is hard to believe it as truth. Am I really mad? I spell it out for myself here one more time. In less than three months’ time, a wind will ravage this coast. A wind like unto none that have been seen here before. The wind will break from the tombs on All Hallow’s Eve, and slip like mist through the graveyards. It will drift in from the ocean like fog. And it will drip from the roofs of the highest steeple in Terrel like rain. But it won’t stay silent. It will grow in colour and speed. It will smash windows and break the backs of ancient oaks that have withstood the hurricanes of ages. And in the heart of that wind, the sickly spirits of the ocean below will come out with fangs at the ready. They will suck the life of my townsfolk and leave them for dead, just as the winds whip and beat their homes down upon their heads. In the morning, Terrel will be a dead place. A graveyard of rubble and dreams. And I have the means to prevent it.
Or so the creature of the cliff claims.
Am I crazy to speak with it? Does it promise delivery from disaster that only God may guarantee? Do I damn my soul just in speaking with it?
And yet.
This is not God’s battle. This is a thirst for souls by souls. An earthbound hell.
Tonight I will call him.
Tonight I will make the pledge that has troubled my heart through this heavy summer. Pray the beast will keep its part of the bargain.
Pray that I am not damned to everlasting hell for my foolishness.
Was this how it all began? Joe wondered. A town’s elder making a deal with the devil to protect his people from…from what actually? A hurricane? A storm of vampires? And how did old Broderick have knowledge of what was to come in the first place? Could it have been just a plant? A ploy by the spirit to gain Broderick’s trust?
He leafed through the book some more, looking for other references. Much of what he found reported only on the mundane life problems of townsfolk long dead and buried. But here and there were sprinkled hints.
August 21, 1893
The demon comes from a different time than those which would suck our lives from us, so it tells me. Thus it has the power to stop the tide—it will save us from ruin for a price; one soul sacrificed from the cliff top each year, on the anniversary of its victory. That sacrifice may be someone from outside of Terrel, but if there is not one, it will choose and call one person from the town on its own. One death per year to prevent hundreds, all at once, now. It seems a grisly price, a cruel but fair bargain. But can I live with such a bargain resting on my head?
I ask it how it came to this realm in the first place, and it says nothing. But I know that somehow, it is linked to the crystal room. And while I may be the first white man to visit that room, I doubt that I am the first man. Perhaps this creature was called and trapped below the earth by Indians centuries ago. It bids me worship it in the cavern and I refuse. I worship none but God I tell it, and its laughter shames me.
“Then why not beg your God to save your town?” It taunts me. I cannot answer without blasphemy on my lips. So I say nothing.
I am damned.
Joe s
hut the book and looked around the yellow shadows of the room. It had all begun here. Or nearby. Broderick Terrel had made a deal with the spirit to save the town from some coming blight. Real or imagined, it didn’t matter anymore. It was time for the bargain to end. And time for the spirit to stop haunting the lives of a group of girls who had had the misfortune to stumble into its lair all those years ago.
Which reminded him that the daughter of one of those women was still behind him in the dark.
He grabbed the book and moved slowly back into the main chamber. The crystals twinkled like stars as his light skipped along their surfaces.
“Cindy?” he called.
He looked around the chamber, but she was nowhere to be seen.
“Cindy, where are you? Shit.”
He looked back the way he’d come, but the tiny room was empty. He looked down the corridor of the center archway, and within a few feet it narrowed into a slit of a walkway big enough for a thin man to walk into sideways, if he wasn’t claustrophobic. He called out to the girl again, but his voice hung in the empty air like a taunt.
The final archway led downward and stayed wide, but after stepping down it a few yards, Joe stopped. Would she have come this way or scrabbled into the corridor she knew and headed back topside?
“Ciiindy?” he called down the dark tunnel and listened. But no reply returned.
“I’m going back up,” he called, and then shrugged. He hoped she was already ahead of him. It seemed like a wise course of action to not be underground when the voice came back from taking care of its other “business.”
He practically ran back the way they’d come, covering the fifteen-minute walk in less than five. But when he stumbled up the stone stairs to the tiled room he stopped cold. There was no light coming from the final flight of stairs.
Because the final flight of stairs was obliterated in rubble. The cap had caved in, leaving him no way out but down.
“Isn’t that convenient,” he muttered. He dropped to the ground, still panting from the run.
Fuckin’ A.
Somewhere, down in the depths of this mountain, the murderous ghost now had both Cindy and Angelica. He hoped they were still alive. But how was he going to keep them that way?
Joe trained the flashlight on the leather journal and carefully opened it once more. It might be worthwhile to know what the hell he was getting into before barreling down the passageway again.
After skipping entries from August and September of 1893, he found the one he was looking for.
October 31, 1893.
Squinting at the faded handwriting on the wavy ancient paper, he began to read.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Karen knew something was horribly wrong the moment she set foot inside the cave. He was there. In her head. And cackling with glee.
“You girls are just in time,” He said. “I didn’t want you to miss the show.”
She looked at Rhonda, who nodded. “You heard Him too?”
Monica grimaced. “He’s waiting for us? What does that mean?”
Karen ran a hand through her salt-and-pepper hair and came away with a handful of sticky strands.
“Guess there’s only one way to find out.”
Monica held back at the entrance. “What if she’s dead?”
Rhonda reached out and took her elbow with a firm hand. “What if she’s not?”
In silence, the three women continued forward.
“Do you hear something?” Monica asked, just as Rhonda, who had been leading the way, put her hand behind her and shushed them.
Karen cocked an ear toward the darkness ahead and listened. The rush of the ocean filled the background with a hiss like static, but beyond that, above it, she could hear…voices?
“Is it Rachel?” she whispered.
Rhonda nodded. “But I think someone else too.”
They crept forward, hanging tight to the wall as it curved into the entryway for the chamber where they had left Angelica, tied and helpless, the night before.
“Noooooo!” came a scream from ahead of them. It was an unmistakably female cry. Karen started forward, but Rhonda put a thick arm out to hold her.
“Wait,” she whispered. “We can’t go rushing in without knowing what’s ahead. Let’s find out what’s going on before we go bursting into it.”
Karen nodded grudgingly but motioned her friend to hurry.
Rhonda covered the head of her flashlight with a hand, which glowed bloodily in the pitch-black of the cave, but let just enough light leak out for them to see their way. They stepped faster along the stone path, and at last, Rhonda stopped, leaning forward to peer into the room ahead. The other women leaned against the larger woman, staring over her shoulder.
There was light coming from inside the cave of the Covenant. It was a weak, sickly yellow light, but it was enough to see their friend, still tied up against the far wall, but not exactly as they’d left her.
She was naked now. And a long-haired, similarly unclad man was levering himself over her struggling form.
“If she won’t give me her firstborn child, I’ll just take her next one,” the voice said from nowhere. “Right after I make it.” Karen started forward again, determined to stop this before it was too late—but found she couldn’t move.
“Enjoy the show, my girls. Thanks for setting the stage.”
Karen strained to move her arm, her leg, even a finger. But nothing worked. She was riveted to the spot, her eyes glued to the scene ahead of them. Over Rhonda’s shoulder, she watched as Angelica tried to knee the rapist in the groin. He just laughed and pinned her thighs down with his own. Then he grabbed her head with both hands and lowered his mouth to hers. When he pulled back, Angelica was gasping. She spit at him, and he slapped her hard across the mouth. The sound echoed through the cave forever, but Angelica didn’t struggle any longer. The man reached between their bodies, grabbed himself, and guided his way inside her, beginning His consummation.
Karen knew from her friend’s stifled sobs that he wasn’t gentle.
And the spirit wasn’t blotting the fortune-teller’s mind this time so that she’d enjoy it either.
She couldn’t move a muscle, but still, a tear crept from Karen’s eye and rolled down her cheek to drip unnoticed on Rhonda’s back.
It had all come full circle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Come to me, child.”
Cindy heard and obeyed.
She could see Joe’s back off to the side. He was looking at something in a little alcove off the main cave chamber. It was dark now in the crystal cave, but she found she could see anyway. She rose from the floor and felt a strange yet familiar tingle stirring in her loins.
“Come to me. This way.”
He guided her to the far corridor, and without pausing, she stepped through. The limestone walls seemed to glimmer with a blue-green light as she walked, the floor sloping ever downward.
“Where are we going?” she asked quietly.
“To a very special place,” He said. His voice was warm in her head and heart. Her whole body felt warm. Hot, really. She could feel sweat steaming from beneath her arms, between her thighs.
“You won’t be needing these,” He said. And she felt her arms pulling the white shirt and bra over her head, dropping them without hesitation on the stones behind her. She stopped a few steps farther on, kicked off her shoes and shimmied out of the stretch pants.
“Now you are ready to come to me,” He said. His voice was silky and low, like a blues singer. She had pleased Him and she felt happy.
“But where?” she asked again.
“To the cave,” He said. “The Cave of Covenant.”
October 31, 1893
I can feel the forces gathering. Like lightning shafts across the midnight sky. My skin prickles with their force, their gathering. I have spoken with Malachai today and he assures me that he can stem their tide, but I sensed a worry in him. The Curburide are stronger than
he ever imagined they could be. But I have his promise sealed in my blood. He will preserve Terrel against these wasps of night, even if it drains his own essence to empty air.
If he wins, he gets 100 souls. By our Covenant, he will preserve Terrel for one hundred years. If he doesn’t, we all perish. Long after I am gone, his invisible eyes will search the harbor from this stony light house and seek the Curburide, those fey, soul-snatching beasts that gather to ride the air into our town this eve.
I pray to God to help us.
And to forgive me.
Joe looked up from the book and shook his head. Curburide? Soul snatchers? He turned the page, working his fingernails in between the sheets and slowly massaging them open. Pieces of fractured, crumbling yellow littered the ground in front of him.
What kind of fairy-tale world had this guy lived in?
The darkness suddenly felt close. The hair on the back of Joe’s neck stood up, and he jerked his head from side to side, trying to see through the shadow. There was nobody here, and yet…
He shivered, then bit down hard on the knuckle of his right index finger.
Steady, boy, he thought. Ease on back.
Steeling himself against the fear, he flipped to the next page of the book. He had to know more about what he was dealing with.
November 1, 1893
It was, perhaps, the worst storm in the history of this coast. My village lies quiet now, thankful at their hearths, thankful that they’ve weathered the gale. But they don’t know. They have no idea how close their souls came, not to death from nature, but to damnation from the hellish attack of the Curburide. The evil wraiths rode the storm in from their hell beyond the ocean like cloud cowboys on mounts of fire. They urged it on, whipping its flanks into a whistling, crashing, destructive wind. They screamed in the night, so loud, I don’t know how my people didn’t die from fright just in the hearing.
But it seems that I’m the only one sensitive to the hidden breed here. Perhaps that’s just as well. Nobody else need live with the voices I hear now every time I close my eyes. The inhuman laughter. The deadly threats of possession.