by Paff, M B
Truman breathed with a tremulous sigh, “Just try.”
“Ok. Let’s see. This one says Daemonium Infestatione. Here’s one that looks like Arcanum Est Spiritus and La Caduta Del Cielo.” Sawyer read several other book’s titles, attempting to pronounce each phonetically. He passed over a large black tome, laying haphazardly on the floor, bound with iron, which contained no visible title.
Truman was silent for several moments. Finally, in a restrained tone, “You’re sure that book says La Caduta Del Cielo.”
“Absolutely. I’m so wired on adrenaline right now I could count the rat shit in the corner.”
“Okay. Okay. Tell me how I get there.”
***
It would be several hours before Truman arrived. “We gotta get outta here,” whispered Tae, as soon as Sawyer ended the call.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s let the expert deal with this shit. Let’s find a way outta here. We need to go.”
“Buddy,” said Sawyer, finitely, “I’ve never agreed with you more. We can meet Truman up at the gate, let’s go.”
The dining room was as quiet and dark as they had left it. The men cringed when they passed the point at which they had heard the disembodied voice, expecting those dread tones to come ringing forth, like a phantom town crier, but all was silent. Tae stepped on a fallen candlestick and almost yelled in surprise. The door to the kitchen was still closed and sealed with the tablecloth. “This is gonna be gross,” the big carpenter whispered, “you know how much I hate fuckin’ bugs.”
“Let’s try that kitchen door again,” Tae offered. He held a linen napkin to shield his hand from the doorknob, wishing he had not discarded his backpack in the parlor and the work gloves contained therein. The puncture wounds in his right hand ached faintly.
“And the dogs?”
“I didn’t see any in the back. We’ll go around the barn and the shed if we have to. The truck is only a few yards from there.”
“Maybe we can get an axe or shovel from the shed,” Sawyer suggested.
Tae nodded and put his hand on the knob. Looking back at his boss, who stood, fists clenched, he mouthed a three second countdown. On the final count, Tae flung open the door.
The kitchen was dark and still. Nothing moved. The refrigerator yawned open, like a black mouth, but there were no cockroaches scurrying across the floor, up the walls, or on the cabinets. The windows and door to the backyard were clear, free of frost. Nothing was as they had left it – as if the events of ten minutes ago had never happened.
The hallway back to the foyer was as dark and motionless as if it had been filled with soil, buried beneath the weight of a thousand tons of dirt and rock.
Tae reached for the back door, his hand protected by the cloth napkin.
Just then, as Tae swung open the door to reveal a small railed porch, Sawyer turned, ever so slightly, to cast his eyes down the hallway, toward the distant, and shrouded, front door. Someone stood before it, facing the rear of the home – watching them from twenty yards away. Sawyer could not detect features, for the darkness was thick and liquid, but he saw the outline of a black form below the hallway arch. The figure did not move, but Sawyer sensed a horrific intent radiating from it like a radio signal. The big man pushed against Tae’s back with three hundred and thirty pounds of frenetic force.
The back yard was lit by the stars and freshly risen quarter moon. The gossamer light edged the short lawn and bordering forest with a metallic sheen, like a knife blade. It was cold, very cold. The two men could detect no presence; no dog or animal awaited them.
The bulk of the barn lay to their left, a hundred yards away. Closer, and sitting on the flank of the main house was a tool shed, roughly the size of a garage, and modeled like the barn – gray paint beneath a shiny tin roof.
Tae slowly peered around the edge of the house. No movement. Nothing stirred.
The truck was gone.
“What the fuck?” Whispered Sawyer, stepping fully around to the side of the house. Tae followed, no longer hesitant.
The big, hairy contractor had parked between the house and the shed, to the left of the entrance. From their perspective it should have been fully in view.
Sawyer jogged forward, keeping the bulk of the house close to his shoulder, still wary of the black pit bulls they had seen earlier. The front yard, and gravel drive, were deserted. The truck had not been moved, it had been taken.
Tae moved to the spot they had left the big diesel. “Look here,” he said, pointing to the shaggy grass. The impression of tire treads, fresh enough to have still been marked in the long, dead grass, was clearly visible. It was as if a giant crane had arrived, picked up the truck, and carried it away, all undetected and leaving no trace.
Sawyer’s harsh epithets and his growls of anger were shortened by the close and voracious barks of an approaching dog pack. The sounds came from the other side of the house, deep within the dark woods, but rapidly closing.
Tae grabbed his boss’ meaty forearm and pulled him back, toward the shed. “Come on, let’s go. Fuck that house, I ain’t going back in there.”
Sawyer nodded and followed.
The door to the tool shed slid open like a barn, on a rail above the door and below the roof line. Inside, the space was untended and dusty. The floor was bare concrete and the ceiling was exposed to the tin roof above. The two men’s flashlights, together with the faint moonlight, were enough to illuminate the shelves of old tools, wood scraps, table saws, and the rusted heap of an old tractor, quietly rotting in the corner. It appeared that the most recent resident had used the structure as a garage, as evidenced by the oil spots on the concrete, but had neglected the remainder of the space.
Tae slid the door shut, and wedged a screwdriver through the latch, locking the dog pack outside.
Sawyer reached for his phone. His intention was to call the police. While the strange events within the house may be ethereal and unexplained, the disappearance of his much loved, and expensive, vehicle demanded the involvement of law enforcement. His phone flashed on but, unlike a few moments ago, denoted a complete and utter lack of cellular reception. “This is shit,” he growled, rage hunching his shoulders like a giant werewolf.
“Something don’t want us to leave here,” Tae offered. Outside, through the shed door, he heard the crunch of clawed paws on gravel and the huff and woof of heavy breathing.
Sawyer remembered the dark figure at the opposite end of the hallway. He turned to describe the event to his buddy but his words were interrupted as the ground opened up beneath him.
Tae whirled around at Sawyer’s startled grunt to find himself alone within the cavernous space. There was no hole, no door, no closet, or box that could have contained his big friend. He had dissolved into the air, like the truck, leaving Tae completely and utterly alone.
***
Sawyer fell. A moment ago his feet had rested upon the concrete floor, but now they were unsupported. Gravity pushed him into darkness. The back of his head glanced off the wall of the hole, a minor blow, but momentarily knocking him senseless. He regained full awareness as his shoulders contacted the narrow confines of the aperture through which he fell, grinding against the rough surface, and painfully dragging him to a halt. The big man came to a rest, squeezed like a hair plug in a sink drain, wedged tightly between the sides of a tunnel. Only friction and the bulk of his shoulders and biceps kept him from falling further, as he felt no resistance beneath his feet.
In his hand he still clutched his iPhone, and in the light shining from it, Sawyer pushed his head back, attempting to see up the length of the hole he had fallen, perhaps to see Tae’s anxious face peering over the lip. No hole, no lip, and no Tae. A gray stone ceiling hung above his head, only inches from his nose. He was trapped – wedged in a hole of unknown depth, hanging by the skin of his body, and buried beneath the earth.
Sawyer had always been big. As a boy, his size, strength, and geniality made him an ideal and reliable fri
end. He had never been forced into fear or anxiety but now, trapped beneath the earth, pressed on all sides by the immovability of cold stone, he found the perfect pitch and tone to scream his terror.
***
Tae’s panic was almost a living thing – a hand about his throat and a fist in his belly. The tool shed was empty. Sawyer had vanished and there was no trace of him to be found. Howls and guttural barks surrounded the building. Claws scraped against the walls. Fear was a metallic taste on his tongue and a dry breath in his constricted throat.
He sat on his ankles, back to the rusty tractor, eyes following the scattered beam of his flashlight. He fought every shadow, using the light like a rapier. There was a howl building in his chest, ready to be unleashed at the slightest prompt, so, when the soft whisper spoke directly into this left ear, he unleashed a cry of stark and anguished terror.
“There is something inside you.”
Tae jumped backward, pressing his back painfully against the eroded metal, and rose to his feet. Again, his flashlight leapt from corner to corner and again he saw nothing. The dogs were now arrayed behind every wall, barking, breathing, howling, and calling to one another. The door rattled and the bare wood shook.
There was a stinging, burning, electrical pain in his right hand. Each fingertip felt immersed in hot, liquid fire. Tae gasped and squeezed his hand into a fist, but the pain intensified, now creeping along each finger, to the back of his hand and his wrist. The pain became pure molten agony and Tae cried out, his throat raw and tears gathering.
The skin of his hand was moving. He dropped the flashlight as soon as the light illuminated the writhing, rope-like, tendrils of movement just below the flesh and clutched his right hand with his left. Just below his fingers he felt something, something long and thin like worms, moving in jerking, chaotic spasms.
Tae turned his right hand over and saw pale white tendrils extruding from each of the wounds he had received. As soon as the light from the flashlight, still rolling on the floor at his feet, touched his hand, the tendrils withdrew completely into his fingertips.
Tae suddenly felt detached and displaced, as if his mind had fled his body, and his spirit now hung, suspended, somewhere in the dark of the tool shed. There was a rushing in his ears and a dizziness descended into his head. His sight became curiously elongated, as if he looked through twin telescopes and then, quietly and soundly, he slumped to the floor, unconscious.
***
Truman drove an old Toyota Tacoma pick-up, scratched and dented, but well maintained. His daily commute was less than a dozen miles roundtrip between campus and his home, but a compulsion toward orderliness kept his vehicle in immaculate running condition.
Truman was of moderate height, with dark cropped hair, and gray eyes behind black, thickly-framed glasses. He was large in the middle and across the shoulders, though his size, unlike Sawyer, was more the result of genetics and appetite than exercise. Outside of the classroom, the professor preferred loose khaki pants and t-shirts – his wardrobe was designed by comfort, solely, rather than fashion.
As Truman drove through the night he kept hearing his friend’s voice listing the volumes he had found. How big, practical Sawyer had stumbled into a nest of the most rare occult texts in history was a baffling riddle. An old, deserted home in central Georgia contained Biancompo’s La Caduta Del Cielo – by what bizarre muse of coincidence could such an absurdity happen? As far as the professor knew, only three of those volumes had survived the Inquisition and all of them were held by the Vatican. Even if Sawyer was wrong, or he had found a forgery, it was enough of a chance to warrant this expedition.
Traffic in Atlanta was exceedingly light. Truman sped through the night with his mind bent on the occult lore awaiting him. It was all hooey, of course, superstitious prattle that did less to explore a religious doctrine, and more to build a mythology and literature worth studying. More Lovecraft than Crowley, mused the chubby educator, structure over substance.
His colleagues would think him a lunatic, Truman knew, as he travelled down the dark interstate. They knew him as sedentary, an epicurean, but a lazy one, rarely travelling to conferences or seminars due to his inability to fully assimilate into polite company. People were momentarily interesting and complex, whereas arcane texts and paraphernalia were mysteries worthy of investigation. Sawyer was a rare exception. The big carpenter was likeable, certainly, but he also responded to Truman’s interests with an enthusiasm that was reciprocally fascinating to the bookish scholar. Most of his fellow literature professors and his family found his research to be a waste of time, but Sawyer responded with genuine curiosity.
Truman followed the address Sawyer had given him. His cellphone showed the way. After exiting the interstate just south of Macon, Truman called his buddy’s phone but voicemail picked up before the first ring.
Three miles from his destination, according to the GPS, Truman felt a stinging, burning pain, like an insect’s sting, across his left forearm. The agony was so sudden and unexpected that he swerved into the opposite lane of the highway. Only the lack of traffic at this hour prevented a head-on collision. The burning did not deviate, it did not build into a crescendo, but came into being as a climax of teeth-gritting throbbing. Truman, tears gathering in his eyes, pulled off the road, onto a shallow bank of immature pines. By the light of his dash and over-head lamp, Truman found no wound or indication of injury on the flesh of his plump forearm. Curiously, the pain emanated at the exact spot of a tattoo – drawn by a Wiccan artist years ago as a symbol of protection. The big man rubbed at the knot work design, but the burning continued. The skin felt hot, unusually so – as if he had been recently burned. The tattoo had been payment for a genealogy Truman had researched linking the artist to the Salem witches of the seventeenth century. He had accepted it purely on its artistic value, not on any spiritual merit.
After a few moments the pain appeared to lessen, or perhaps Truman was better able to endure its insistent aching. He checked the map on his smartphone and then pulled back onto the dark highway.
The turn-off was illuminated by a brilliantly resplendent full moon. Odd, Truman remarked, there had been no indication of a full moon on the drive south. In fact, until this very moment, he had not noted the moon’s position or inclination. If the light had not been so ascendant, he would have passed the intersection without a second glance. For whatever reason, it struck the area with a powerful intensity, almost as bright as sunrise.
Truman reached the open gate his friend had described and turned onto the driveway. Within moments the forest parted to reveal the large white house and complex of smaller structures. Sawyer’s big white truck was parked to left of the gravel pad. Truman slid his smaller vehicle beside it.
As soon as he placed his foot on the ground, the other still in his truck, the pain on his forearm blossomed into a white-hot stabbing agony. Truman gasped and cursed. Just as quickly, with the speed of a broken lightbulb, or a pulled tooth, the pain vanished. The big man pushed back his sleeve and saw, in the silver light of the insistent moon, the unblemished, unmarked, and untattoed skin of his arm. The Celtic knot work, once drawn in blue and black ink, had completely disappeared. Truman stared, unable to comprehend the evidence before his eyes.
The yard and the house were quiet. The air felt colder here, more so than at home, a hundred and fifty miles to the north and substantially higher in elevation. Sawyer’s truck was unoccupied, though Truman expected the two carpenters to be inside the house, hopefully bundled up against the frigid chill.
He pushed the disappearing tattoo from his mind. Though it deserved further investigation, surely, it was not of paramount importance – not when compared to the presence of an ancient book of mysticism, or the well-being of his friends. Sawyer’s claims of unexplained phenomena, spectral voices, black dogs and hornets, were also eclipsed by the chance that Biancompo’s masterpiece lay inside this abandoned plantation house.
Truman saw no dog pack as he walked the pa
th to the porch stairs. He carried a small LED flashlight in his hand, which showed an untended lawn and nothing else. The forests bordering the property were quiet, preternaturally so, with only the crunch of gravel beneath his boot steps audible. He half-expected to see Sawyer, big, bearded, and jovial, greet him on the porch, but the space was dark and vacant.
The door was unlocked. It swung open freely, as if freshly lubricated. The air inside the home was warm and pleasant. Truman smelled a hearth fire, that most comforting and pleasant aroma only evident on cold winter nights amongst the company of good friends or family. There was a cheeriness to this place that spoke of holidays and shared memories. Sawyer had described the house as creepy and dirty, but the furniture within the foyer appeared to be freshly waxed, and the crystal chandelier was spotless and glinting in the moonlight.
“Sawyer? Taevous?” Truman called out. He saw the backpack laying against a green velvet chair and, past the entry into the parlor, a duffel bag and toolbox. The carpenters were here, but perhaps they had fallen asleep somewhere within the house.
The corpulent professor removed a small leather bound journal from his pocket, and then discarded his jacket beside the backpack. The journal contained a collection of notes on a very specific topic – the description of occult texts. Half the pages contained Truman’s small, neat, symmetrical print, with loose drawings and cover copies of grimoires and spell books. The journal represented five years of research, parceled and gathered between rare moments of free study. Truman had hoped that one day, when he felt he had acquired sufficient material, he would publish a definitive examination of demonology with a focus on its relationship with the mythos of pre-Colonial occultist literature.
“Back here, Truman.” Sawyer’s voice reached down the black hallway before him. A pale square of moonlight, shining through a rear window, dimly lit the big man.