by Paff, M B
Truman watched as Sawyer’s big, black shadow turned and disappeared through an adjacent door. “Some place you’ve found here,” he said, moving around the foyer table and entering the stairwell. Above him, lost in shadow, the gnarled staircase loomed like the taproot of an enormous tree, stretching into the black ether. “Looks like the perfect place for a witch’s coven,” he added, jokingly.
There was no response.
The kitchen was vast and quiet, but smelled like cookies and apple pie.
Truman turned left and entered the dining room. Before him yawned a black portal. In the darkness there was movement, like bodies writhing beneath a black curtain. Abstractly, Truman wondered at his friends’ lack of flashlights or lanterns. Sawyer was usually the very epitome of preparedness.
He entered the library, as one would dive into black water. His flashlight found no trace of his friends. Truman almost turned around to head for the kitchen, but the actinic light he cast revealed an odd scene. In the center of the room, resting upon a thickly loomed carpet of Persian subtlety, was a pile of books. Most had been ripped apart, the bindings broken and the pages torn and scattered, as if in a rage. The tomes, all hardbound in old leather, glinted with a wet sheen. Something had been dumped on the pile – something thick and gelatinous. Truman’s nose was violently offended by a putrescence rising from the heap of vandalized books. It smelled like sewage and rotten flesh, sprinkled with toxic waste and garnished with a side of dumpster sludge.
The desecration appeared to be recent, though Truman could not imagine why his friends would do such a thing. Sawyer sounded rattled on the phone, to be certain, but to be so unbalanced as to commit this act? The big, solid, dependable carpenter was not so easily disturbed.
All the shelves in the library had been emptied. There was space for thousands of books, but all were bare. A sick disappointment twisted in Truman’s belly, he had so anticipated examining and cataloging this library, to be robbed of it now, after travelling so far in the middle of the night, seemed a crime.
Truman’s light fell upon a black book, sitting alone on the floor, far from the pile.
A voice spoke from behind him, in the darkness, “Tu es sacerdos suscipiat verba domum meam.”
The pudgy professor jumped and turned in a spasmodic pirouette. His foot slid on the rank oil and he almost fell upon the pile of books.
In the stark light of his flashlight, an impossible sight emerged.
***
Sawyer’s throat was raw from screaming. He did not know the duration of his imprisonment or the time of day or night. His cellphone had been lost into the void below and it had taken all the light with it. The darkness was almost a kindness, for it hid the confines of his prison.
The big man had fallen three times. His shoulders were now badly abraded and his clothing torn. Each time he had raised his head and noted, from the rebounding of his breath, that the ceiling had lowered in response. The bizarre unreality of this horror had not lessened as the time in his prison had dragged on, instead, it had grown to form a separation between his consciousness and terror. This was not real, his brain kept screaming, this is a delusion, a nightmare, it was false. His breathing was ragged and becoming labored.
He fell. Sawyer’s shoulders lost contact with the walls of the bore, and his feet slid against its grainy surface. He could find no ledge or contact of sufficient substance to slow his descent. The terror of falling, coupled with the complete lack of vision, was so unnerving to the big man, that he found his voice again. His ragged chest let loose with an unmanly shriek.
Sawyer’s descent into the black bore accelerated as if the big man was being swallowed into the gullet of a leviathan.
A floor of cold and hard solidity arrested his plunge. His feet folded beneath him and Sawyer fell painfully to his knees. He gulped and gasped and swore. His hands felt cold, gritty concrete beneath him.
The big man had returned to the tool shed, at the exact spot he had fallen. He rose to his feet and in the dim light searched the structure. “TAE!” He called, “TAE! Where the fuck are you?!”
Tae’s body was prone and still beside the rusty hulk of a tractor. He did not respond to Sawyer’s voice, nor to the big man’s grip on his shoulders. There did not appear to be any wounds on his body, but the frail light made a definitive search impossible. Tae’s skin felt warm, however, and his chest was rising with regular and unlabored breaths.
Outside the building, the night was soundless. The pack of wild, giant, black dogs was either silent, or gone.
Finally, desperate and fighting the cold squeeze of panic, Sawyer slapped Tae’s cheek with a broad palm.
The wiry black man jerked upright, striking his face into Sawyer’s chest. The two men rebounded and fell back, landing on bruised posteriors.
Tae was screaming, “Get them outta me! Get them outta me!” His left hand tore at his right, attempting to scrape the skin from his bones.
Sawyer arrested the self-mutilation with a strong hand to Tae’s left arm. “Calm down, buddy. Calm down. There ain’t nothin’ there, see? Nothin’. You was dreaming, buddy, calm down. Nice and easy. Breathe nice and easy. See there? Nothin’ there.”
After a moment of ragged gasping, Tae quieted. He reacquired his flashlight and examined his right hand and arm quickly, before his dread could rise and stop him. Exempting the shallow, self-inflicted scratches on the back of his hand, and some dried blood on his fingertips, there was no other indication of a wound or a parasitic infection. The subdermal worms were gone.
“Come on,” spoke Sawyer, “lets go.”
Tae stopped and listened at the door, careful to detect any noise coming from the opposite side. All was quiet.
Sawyer’s truck was once again parked on the gravel pad. Beside it, the big man recognized Truman’s Tacoma. There was no sign of the pudgy professor.
Tae’s breathing was not as ragged, but Sawyer could hear a frenetic, panicked edge to it that he did not like.
The two men reached the F250, both half-believing it would disappear right in front of them. Sawyer quickly examined it, and Truman’s smaller truck. No abnormalities were apparent. The Tacoma’s hood was still hot.
Before them, the house loomed black and opalescent, like a castle made of moonstone. The windows were dark, screaming mouths.
Tae climbed into the passenger seat of the Ford. Only when he closed the door did he begin to breathe easier.
Sawyer stood facing the house, his legs widely planted, like a gunman approaching a duel. He had ripped off the torn sleeves of his shirt, revealing reddened biceps and thick, hairy forearms. There was a conflict waging in his belly. His duty to his friend warred against the terror screaming like a madman in his mind.
Tae watched as his boss opened the passenger door to the Ford. He reached across Tae’s lap and retrieved a holstered handgun from the glove compartment.
“Start it up,” commanded Sawyer, handing Tae the keys, “and get outta here. Drive back to the highway. I’ll meet you back there in Truman’s truck. I ain’t gonna leave him.”
Tae choose not to argue. He knew Sawyer well.
The big man walked with firm strides toward the porch steps. Behind him, the big diesel engine roared into life.
***
A naked woman regarded Truman with a subtle grin. She was utter beauty encased in flesh – artwork made into a living form. By the light of the academic’s flashlight, her flawless skin radiated a perfect, rosy health, like a peach dangling ripe and juicy from a branch. Her hair was a glassy black that fell in a liquid cascade from a porcelain brow to round and smooth shoulders. Her eyes were large and exotic. They reflected blue like an aspen forest below heavy clouds. Her lips were full and red. Breasts from a Giovanni Bellini painting, each of symmetrical and anatomical perfection, descended across a tapered chest. Below those ripe orbs, her torso widened into round, lascivious hips. Her vagina was tiny and wickedly smooth. The woman parted her red mouth and a tongue, like the snake
of Eden, suggestively and temptingly moistened her lips.
Truman could feel the temperature of the library rise, as if the naked woman was a living elemental. She was the last thing he would have expected to enter this room. He was, for a moment, taken aback by the absurdity and power of her appearance.
She spoke, in English, “Welcome to my home, Truman,” and her voice was like the aria of a nunnery, with an edge of wisdom and confidence that spoke of maturity that belied her young, fresh form. His name was a promise passing her lips.
Words escaped him for a single moment, “Uhhh – thank you. Er, I’m looking – I’m sorry, I’m looking for my friends? Sawyer and Tae, maybe you’ve seen them?”
“The big, hairy man and the dark man of the East? Yes, Truman, I’ve seen them, but they’ve gone – gone to other things, other places.” She approached him until his skin registered the heat from her flesh, like the embers of an old hearth fire. “Do not concern yourself with them, my dear Truman, you have so many other things to occupy yourself, here in this house.” Her hand rose to her breast and rubbed the ruby nipple.
The masturbation shook Truman from his stutter and burned the fog from his mind. “Perhaps you’d like to clothe yourself? It would ensure better conversation, I assure you.”
Her laugh was like a cacophony of tiny crystal bells. “How delightful you are, my dear! Such gallant charm,” she reached for his hand, but the big man withdrew, slowly, without recrimination, as if it were a dancing maneuver.
“I can only guess that my friends have put you up to this, yes? A joke? Are they standing in the hallway, congratulating and lauding their wit?”
“You think I’m a joke, Truman?”
“Not at all, ma’am, but I feel that I am the butt of one.”
“Don’t be silly, dear Truman,” She laughed, “there is no joke here. Only you and only me.”
Truman cleared his throat. He lowered the beam of his flashlight, as if keeping it on her chest was an indecency. “May I know your name, ma’am?”
“Such good grace and manners,” she giggled, “What a pleasure. You may call me Eldonna.”
“Eldonna? What a lovely name.”
“Why thank you, sweet Truman. Now, would you like me to help you find what you are looking for?”
“Until this moment, I was looking for my friends.”
Eldonna beamed a smile that would warm the knees of a chaste eunuch. “You are in my library, surely you are looking for a book?”
“Ah, that,” Truman coughed, glancing at the pile of desecrated volumes, “You seem to be having an issue with your books.”
“Not at all, lovely man. Those are worthless, baseless, and paltry filth worth not the time nor the stain they’ll leave on the carpet. What you seek is here, my darling. Here.” Her shapely arm pointed at the single text laying on the floor.
The black book was like the core of a dead star, pulling all light and matter to its center. Its gravity seemed to warp the fabric of reality and pull the pudgy professor toward itself.
As Truman turned to confront it, Eldonna stepped to his side. One perfect, delightful breast pressed against his elbow. “You have sought for such a long time, beautiful Truman, always looking but never finding the answer – the answer that will illuminate all those dead ends, which will give meaning to the search. You’ve taken so many steps, but are always just a book, or a page away. This is the book of all answers – the prize of every quest, the solution of every puzzle, the climax of every tryst.”
Truman felt her body, lithe, fluid, and hot, press against his shoulder and hip. “Such promises you give me, Eldonna, such knowledge you offer. This book here, you say?”
“Oh yes, my love,” she whispered in a husky rush, “It is my gift to you.”
“Please hand it to me.”
Eldonna paused for a substantial moment. Truman felt her hesitation like the flicker of a candle flame. She spoke, but the breathy timber was absent from her voice, “Open it, Truman, it is yours now.”
The big man turned to her and now, standing a head above her, gazing down into her shadowed eyes, he saw a dim light begin to rise from her body, as if a lightbulb was slowly fed electricity. “But I’d much rather accept it from your sweet hand, Eldonna. You offer it with such conviction it seems only appropriate, my dear.”
On the floor, between dark stains in the wood, the light revealed the careful scripting of intricate designs, marking the interior of a chalk circle. A nub of chalk lay discarded beside it.
The naked woman flinched backward as if pulled by a chain about her waist. Her body came to a sudden rest with hair and limbs spread and slowly floating, suspended above the floor like a corpse submerged in water.
Truman shone the flashlight on her fully, but it was hardly necessary. The library was becoming starkly illuminated by Eldonna’s white flesh. The light shining from her body grew at an exponential rate until Truman was forced to look away. There was a sudden flash, like a star exploding into dead space. When Truman turned back, Eldonna was gone, replaced by a boiling, turbulent, seething cloud of purple and black mist. It stretched from wall to wall, eclipsing the doorway behind it. Dimly, as if through an enormous void, Truman heard screams of anguish emanating from the schism. They rose and joined until merging into a voice. The words it spoke rattled the dust from the furniture and stung Truman’s ears. He raised his journal as if it were a shield..
“You play with me, mortal man, whereas no fool would dare it.”
There was a confidence building within the corpulent scholar that denied fear. It originated within the leather cover of his journal, the repository of his research. If this was a demon, as it so resembled, and all his knowledge of the occult was suddenly proven true, then it was by that very scholarship that he would find his salvation. Any normal human heart would have blossomed in terror, but Truman’s convictions were affirmed and he would not stand down. “Not at all, demon, but I thank you for your gift, even if it wasn’t the one you intended.”
“Gift?” Spoke the void.
“Indeed. The very same gift you promised – the end of my search, the solution to my questions. In a single moment everything has changed. What I’ve known as fiction has now become faith.”
“I know your heart, Truman Cadmusson, and what is more, I know your history. I see your failures and your desires, for it is my nature to know it. You surrender to every appetite and gorge yourself on venial pleasures. You doubt, oh how you doubt. Your life is the satiation of craving and the rejection of belief. Do not seek to hide your true nature. It is as visible to me as the words of a book.”
“As I tell my students, demon, be sure to read that book with your mind, not only your eyes.” There was a grin on Truman’s face, but his mind was a whirlwind of conjecture, hypothesis, and finally, decision. “It is your failure, not mine, that is apparent here, foul devil. Your failure that proves what a frail and fragile thing you truly are.”
“Failure? You fool, you truly know nothing.”
“Nonsense. Your pathetic attempt at temptation was a laughable failure. Eldonna? Really? Do you think I’m a fool? Eldonna, the succubus that perverted the army of Gaverna? Your disguise was pathetic.”
“Regardless, Truman Cadmusson, you are still here, in this house, before the book. This is exactly the place and the time at which I designed. I have not failed.” The great black formless mass rolled and billowed, like an oil slick. The illusions it had placed about the house vanished. Dust and dirt clouded the beam from Truman’s flashlight and a cloud of vapor formed from his breath.
“This book,” spoke Truman, attempting to keep his teeth from chattering in the stark chill. “Why do you desire it so much?
“That book belongs to me. It should not exist on this plane. It was stolen from my archive, within the mists and chasms of Abaddon, by a mortal and brought here. You must return it to my realm.”
“What does it contain?”
The cloud seethed and the temperature fell. �
��Knowledge not belonging within the hands of man.”
“Bullshit,” barked the big man, “Knowledge is the end of all means, it is immune from judgement. Those that seek it, by right of progress, deserve it.”
“Foolishness.”
“Regardless, it is true. You have earned failure, demon, I will not give it to you.”
“Truman Cadmusson, I had thought you an intelligent man. Even in your arrogance can you not see the truth around you? I could bring this house down upon your head. I could cover your body with sores and pustules. You have no defense. Your paltry protection, the witch’s charm, hardly gave me pause. There is nothing you can do to limit my power, but accede to my wishes. Open the book and send it back to where it belongs.” The timbers of the house began to groan as the demon spoke. Dust and plaster fell from the ceiling.
“Oh, how wrong you are, liar,” Truman hurled each word like an arrow, “I’ve all the protection I need.” The big man fell to his knees.
***
The hallway seethed with a million crawling, clacking, and rustling insects. Sawyer was brought to a halt, on the opposite end of the foyer table, by the black swarm. The air was colder, if even possible, from his first visit. The sound generated from the rubbing carapaces echoed from every surface, it was deafening.
Try as he might, Sawyer could not make himself enter the stairwell. The connection between foot and brain was interrupted by his revulsion.
Distantly, at the opposite end of the house, a white light of brilliant intensity shone from the dining room, filling the kitchen and hallway with a violent opalescence. The light only reinforced Sawyer’s terror, for it defined the mass of crawling insects in intricate detail. The 9mm in his pocket was as useless as a fly swatter.
“TRUMAN!!!” He yelled, in a rolling bass, “TRUMAN!!!”
There was a metallic squeak of rusting hinges from the entrance. Tae was at his side, grinning in a white flash of teeth. Sawyer looked down at his friend feeling both reassured and annoyed.