“Should have come here with your folks, else you would have known,” Agnes pointed out for me.
“I didn’t think I would be particularly welcome, truth be told mam,” I said.
A middle aged woman with mousy brown hair said, “If you can help us, I could care less if you ever believed in God. Father Chaput has been a changing for a while now, and then he up and disappeared two months ago, only to suddenly show back up again two days ago. But when he came back, he wasn’t right. Now I wish he would disappear again. You’ll see.” I didn’t like the sound of that.
“When do we get out of this blasted town?” Agnes asked.
“You should stay put until we tell you it is safe to leave,” Colin told her. “Now can you show us where the catacombs are? We have some questions for the Father.”
“Good luck with that. We just barely got him in the hole a few hours ago,” the boy said as he slammed the end of his shotgun into a slab of stone that had been set in the floor.
I walked over and saw one of the Deist mantras engraved in the marble slab, In God We Trust, In God’s Image, which I always thought was ironic, because if anyone had God’s supernatural ability, it was the Users. As Users were the minority, we remained outnumbered and over-governed.
The slab was slightly sunken into the floor, so getting it out would require a specialized tool or a lot of manpower. I slid a glance over at Colin and checked the latter off my short list.
“What happened?” Colin asked.
“He ain’t natural,” the middle aged woman said.
“That’s an understatement sister,” Agnes said.
“Amen,” I heard someone else say.
“He is an abomination of hellish technologies, is what he is,” the elderly man added.
“How so?” Colin asked while slightly cocking his head sideways.
“You’ll see,” the boy sneered at us.
“Do you have a way of opening it?” Colin asked the motley group.
“There used to be a lever you could use behind the pulpit that would lift it up, but with the electricity out, that option is no longer available to us,” Agnes said.
A ruffian stepped forward, who had blood splatters all over him and walked with a limp. He said in a gruff manner, “I got what you need.” He then held up a crowbar that had seen better days, probably ones without bloody chunks from unknown origins on it. Colin took it and began wedging an end of it into the crevice where the slab was located.
“Wait a minute Colin, I want to see what can be seen,” I said, and he nodded his head in understanding. I plopped myself down on one of the pews, shut my good eye, and tried to see outward to what lay beyond the slab into the catacombs. I got nothing. It was as if a brick wall had been placed before me. I was beginning to regret ever coming to this damned town.
“Nothing,” I said as I shook my head.
“Once we are in, slide it back into place as quickly as possible,” Colin told them. Several men stepped forward in preparation for our descent.
“So you didn’t see any of the undead out there?” the elderly man asked me while Colin jimmied the slab up. I watched him in astonishment lift the slab single handedly, and then he held it about an inch above the slot, in preparation for us descending into the church’s catacombs.
“All I can say with certainty is that there are still some people alive in this town,” I told him. I did not tell him that they were not very polite ones though, which were always the last ones to die. I reiterated, “But we didn’t come across any of the dead.”
“Are you ready?” Colin asked, sounding strained.
I turned to the man I assumed was Ulysses and told him, “If we don’t make it out by nightfall, you should make your way to the main gates on the western side. There aren’t any more entrances into or out of the town besides the western and eastern ones, are there?” The eastern one was a waterway exit for transportation purposes.
“That’s it,” the boy said. I looked over to Agnes, who shook her head in confirmation.
I took out an athame and my pistol before I said, “Let’s do this.”
“How many should we expect to meet down there?” Colin asked.
“Oh, there is only the one, but that is plenty enough,” the ruffian replied solemnly, before handing me his lantern. “You’ll need this more than I do.”
I took it and thanked him, even as I noted the lightness of it. There wasn’t much oil left in it. The elderly woman stepped forward and handed hers to me as well, which didn’t look much better off.
With both lanterns in hand, Colin hefted the tomb’s marble slab to the side, just wide enough for us to take the stone hewn stairs down into the crypt. As we descended into the dark hole, I couldn’t help but liken it to a snake pit and we were the rats.
After we made it down the hole and the lid had been shut securely behind us, I lifted one of the lanterns to reveal a mausoleum of tombs on either side of a narrow hallway. All sorts of people had been buried down here over the years. I recognized some of the names carved into the marble name plates as previous leaders in the town. Most had been mayors or priests who had died in Convent. There were even ones whom I recognized had served in Our Flawless Father Church, back from my neck of the woods. I began to look over the names on the plates closely to see if there was anything conspicuous.
“What are you looking for?” Colin asked.
“One name in particular. It is customary for gravestones to be erected for the dead, even if there was no body for the burial. I was wondering if there was one for Father Periwinkle. He was the priest who died the same night as my Grandfather.”
Colin took the other lantern and turned around in the slender corridor to look for the name on the crypts with me. After a few precious minutes, he said, “Found him.”
“That remains to be seen,” I said before I chuckled at my own pun. I walked over to it and asked him, “Use the crowbar and open it up for me.”
He handed me his lantern and then he pried it into the edge of the plate. A few seconds later, he had it open, and then he let the stone slab fall to the ground, where it broke into three pieces. I slid out the sarcophagus and reaffirmed my resolve to open it. It was supposed to be empty. It had better be empty.
I opened the wooden lid and was surprised by what I saw. Inside was no body, but there was debris, consisting of twigs and leaves that had been twined together into an amorphic form. I picked up the lantern, so its light would illuminate the space for a better look. That was when I noticed the sigils that had been drawn in ochre outlining the entire interior of the box. I couldn’t identify them, but I needn’t have worried, since Colin knew what he was looking at.
“That’s a containment circle.”
“What level?”
“Maybe thirteen, but I’m not sure. Some of them are reminiscent of the central sigil on the floor of the church we just saw, so it could be level four.”
“I never learned about level thirteen marks in school.”
“It would have been taught to you if you had sought an advanced degree.” Oh. “Some of the theory involved here is archaic too,” he added, as if that would make me feel better.
He looked up from the opposite side of the coffin and said, “Don’t fret, that is why I am here with you.” His face was illuminated from below, the lantern flickering up from its position on the floor. I couldn’t help but notice how his eyes reflected oddly in the dim light.
“Are you sure you can’t turn into wolf?” I asked.
“Would you like me to?”
I smiled. Then I said slowly and deliberately, “It would be inconvenient if you changed during an inopportune time.”
“Like now?” he said before he leaned over and placed a gentle kiss in my lips. Then we heard a splashing noise coming from down the corridor, most likely due to the low water table.
“No, I think now would be a grand time for you to turn into one, but I might be able to summon something that can help us instead.”
“What were you thinking?”
“How about one of the nephelium?” These creatures weren’t the product of a god and man like Nephilim were, but were rather a very simplistic tattletale. It could scout for us, and with very specific directions, it should report back exactly what it saw. They were also difficult to perceive when they were in stealth mode. I would have to barter with it to do this service for us, but they usually didn’t ask for much. Sometimes a ribbon from your hair was enough.
“Do you want to try your eye again first?”
I closed my good eye, and tried to envision what laid beyond this small tunnel, but I couldn’t see anything. I suspected that I may have had to of been at the location first, in order to see it in my mind’s eye.
I replied despondently, “No, I can’t see anything.”
“I think it would be more prudent that you summon a demon with some strength to help us, if we are to take the word of the fellowship up there,” he said while pointing upwards.
“I thought you had that covered?” I asked.
“It may seem that I have the strength of a Fortis class demon, but I am still only mortal,” he said flatly. “Summon your nephelium.”
From down the way, we heard some gears grinding. I didn’t wait to be told twice, as I scribbled the few marks necessary to summon one of them. I allowed myself to be a conduit for the Earth’s resonances before pushing them into the ochre sigils, empowering them, and then we waited.
Out of the wall plopped a small, silver globular creature about the size of a grapefruit. It unquestionably was a young one.
“I’ve never actually seen one before,” he whispered.
“I’ve never used one in the dark,” I admitted.
He raised his lantern, jiggled it, and said, “It’s not dark yet.”
I smiled in the dimming light. Both our lanterns were about to run out of fuel, just as surely as we were about to run out of time. I spoke to the little guy in the guttural language of his realm.
At first, it wanted my first born child in exchange for the services I needed for it to do. I would like to smack the Summoner in the head who spread that rumor. I wound up giving it a few strands of my hair in payment. It took them and then rolled like a small globe of mercury across the ground in search of what was making that clickety-clack noise from down the corridor.
Within a minute, the tiny demon rolled back to us and I picked it up. Colin drew close and we both peered into its softly reflective surface. Its special ability was that it could capture a series of images on its exoskeleton and project them back at a later point, which also made for an excellent camouflage. They needed it too, so they could survive in their harsh realm.
After surveying what it showed us, I turned to Colin and asked, “Is that an automaton or a mummified person?”
“I believe that it is a bit of both.”
“Oh my.”
“I have the crowbar, so if it has flesh, it can tear. If it has gears, they can be pried apart. We can stop him.”
“We have guns and my athames too.”
“Guns with ordinary lead slugs,” he pointed out. I should have at least asked the captain for some exploding rounds before we entered the town. Wendy would have.
I finally replied, “Well, if it doesn’t die by old fashioned bullets, then the best we can hope for is to immobilize him.”
“If we laid a trap for him, you could send him to another plane,” Colin offered.
I considered it for a few moments while we listened to the sound of its clicking gears growing louder. I finally whispered back, “I don’t think we have enough time.”
He nodded his head, and then I told the nephelium to follow us from a safe distance, since we may have need of it still. It asked for a nail trimming and I complied, slicing a sliver for him with one of my knives. He promptly absorbed it into its body. The last thing I needed was a hungry nephelium, since they had a tendency to nag.
So we wouldn’t become trapped, we decided that it was best to meet it head on. We walked down the corridor, that couldn’t have been more than three feet wide. All the while, each step was bringing us closer to the racket up ahead.
We turned a bend and found ourselves on the edge of a cistern of an indeterminate size. It was filled with ten foot arches and supports, but if one of those fell, it would be anyone’s guess if the ceiling would hold. Additionally, it was difficult to tell how deep the water was. I looked around and didn’t see the clockwork mummy that we had seen reflected in the nephelium, but in all honesty, I really couldn’t see all that much in the darkness that stretched beyond the lantern’s weak light.
“We should turn off our lanterns, there is a small hole in the ceiling that should provide enough light for me to see by, giving us an advantage,” he said.
I was willing to try anything at this point. He cut both of our lights and then we were swathed in shadow. I looked up and some distance above us was indeed a small gray circle in what I assumed to be the well opening for the cistern. I wondered where it opened up on the church’s property, as I couldn’t recall there ever being one there before.
I edged slowly back into the corridor, since I couldn’t see a bloody thing. If it did come at us, I was just as likely to shoot Colin as the mummy.
Colin backed up into me and said in a hushed voice, “It’s across the water. It’s studying us.”
“How far across is it?” I breathed more than asked.
“There is another corridor directly across from us, about a hundred feet away,” he said before turning to face me.
“Do you think it can swim?”
“I’d like to think it is too heavy, but if it doesn’t need to breathe, then it might simply walk along the bottom of the cistern to get to the other side.” Somewhere there was a joke in there, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of one just then.
“There’s something else too.”
“What more can there be?”
“It’s considerably taller than it should be.” That didn’t sound good.
“Other than that, does it look to be the same as it was on the nephelium?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want to do?” I asked him.
“I think a lot depends on how deep the water is,” he replied.
“Maybe it wants to merely talk to us?” I asked with false bravado.
He looked back over his shoulder and said in a long suffering manner, “We can try.”
He turned around again and called out, “Hello! Are you Father Chaput?”
We heard no reply other than the ominous clicking sound of gears winding up.
“Ask him if he is Father Periwinkle,” I bid Colin.
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to be Father Periwinkle would you?” Again no response, so Colin asked, “Are you amenable to talking with us?” Then I heard a spring pop and suddenly there was a splash closer to us than I would have liked, which was followed by silence.
Colin roughly pushed me back into the corridor, back towards the tombs. “It’s coming to us,” he said in a spooked tone, which in turn rattled me.
Once we were back near the entrance, I could hear Colin attempting to move the slab above us, while I fumbled around trying to relight one of the lanterns.
After another precious few seconds, he said, “It’s stuck. They’ve done something to it up above.” He then took the lantern from me while I shoved my flint at him. After finally relighting the lantern, I took it back from him. Even though the whole thing took about thirty seconds, I thought it was worth it to see once again.
I looked back towards the other direction of the tunnel and asked, “How far back do you think the tunnel goes in the other direction?”
“Probably not long enough.” We ran for it and discovered that it was not nearly long enough. It opened up into a small alcove that must have been for praying.
Colin said, “Stay here.” He left, but returned quickly with Periwinkle’s coffin. He wedged it across th
e narrow opening of the room and then braced it with his body.
“Any ideas?” he asked.
It traditionally took weeks to create a mummy, so Father Chaput’s soul must surely be in the ghost realm by now. I thought about all the contingencies that might prevent that from happening. He could have been captured in the way that guardian ghosts typically were. However, the intent of mummies was different. Their bodies were preserved so their soul could occupy it and walk the earth again. Could the priest still be in there, occupying the shell of his body? What did mummies have to do with demons and Deist Priests? Could a demon spirit be trapped in what remained in the husk of his body?
“I’m going to try and trap him.”
“How?”
I took out my compass from under my shirt collar, found the geographic North Pole, and then fell to my knees to write out the strongest sigils I knew for trapping an ethereal demon spirit. My one hope depended on there being a demon trapped inside of the mummy. I didn’t know if Father Chaput was in there with him or not, but if it didn’t work, then we would have to treat it as a deader or revenant that had technological augmentations. I wished I had a Westinghouse pistol. I thought that if we survived this, then our next stop should be the constable’s office so I could get one.
Colin said, “You need to add the Wedjat there.” He then pointed to an empty space at the eastern side of the sigil. I complied, and then we both heard the telltale clicking coming closer from down the hallway. I redoubled my speed. The marks didn’t have to be perfect, right?
I had to encompass Colin within it, since our space was limited. When I thought I had finally finished, Colin said, “Give me the stick.”
I looked up at him, the dying light flickering strangely in his eyes. He had knowledge that I did not have, but he lacked the knack of doing it. I had that in spades. It also occurred to me that he would protect me with his life, if that were what the situation required. Suddenly, something clicked within me, and I felt as if he might be more than just a casual friend or lover. I handed him my stick without hesitation.
“Hold the coffin,” he instructed me.
The Summoner's Sigil Page 16