Bill
Lansing thumbed through the magazine, nervously searching for the
picture he wanted. He found it near the center spread. A tall
sensuous blond with a curvaceous figure and blood red lips. She was
striking a seductive pose and her stare was direct, provocative. Her
hand played promiscuously across her thighs and her smile bordered
somewhere between mischievous and obscene.
His palms
were sweaty as he fumbled with the scissors and cut out her picture.
Delicately, he pasted it in the photo album on his lap, positioning her
amidst a tropical seascape with the waves crashing behind her and warm
Mediterranean breezes playing across her skin. He had already pasted a
picture of himself next to her in the sand. Throwing the magazine
aside, he placed the photo album on the table in front of him and went
into the other room.
Quickly,
he stripped off his clothes and put on a hooded black robe. He
threw the hood over his head as he re-entered the kitchen. Snapping off
the lights, he positioned six candles around the photo album, and lit
them, one by one, moving counter clockwise around the table. Then he
went to the cupboard and returned with a crystal decanter filled with
sea salt. Slowly, he poured the contents in a circle around the table.
Closing
his eyes, he concentrated for a moment and then began to hum louder and
louder until his voice became a chant, rising and falling in cadence.
When he spoke, his voice was deep and dark, vibrating with inner power.
"Forces of
darkness, envelop me with your mystical light. Contrive this image in
my dreams and unfold what I have created. By all that is evil in this
world and beyond, I beseech you, I implore you, nay, I command it in
the name of the Lord of Darkness."
And with
these words, the candles flickered and faded for a moment, casting
hideous writhing shadows on the walls. Again, he began to chant and
moan, rocking back and forth, waving his hands over the table. An
ominous rumbling shook the room and then all was silent. The candles
still wavered in the darkness. Slowly, he got to his feet and turned on
the light. The picture lay smoldering on the table.
He sat
there for a while, staring at the picture, smoking a cigarette. The
gray smoke hanging over him like a thick shroud of evil. A dark smile
played across his face as he sat there.
At last,
he thought to himself. After years of collecting books and reading
articles on the occult, searching for anything that would shed some
light on the elusive art of magic, he'd finally discovered the secret
of casting spells. And tonight, that magic would enter his dreams.
It had all
been a coincidence. He'd wandered into a basement book store in
a run-down section of the city to ask for directions. He was facing the
shop keeper when something caught his eye, a black line reflected in
the mirrored chrome on the front of the cash register. He spun around
and ran towards an old leather-bound volume covered with dust and
sandwiched between two other novels on the top shelf. To his delight,
he discovered the book was filled with spells and incantations.
Quickly,
he thumbed through the pages, discovering archaic drawings and diagrams
on the inside cover with Latin verses scrawled in various places. On
the back, he recognized the name of an old English sorcerer who'd been
burned at the stake for witchcraft in the early 1400's. He'd been a
member of the Ring of Darkness, an ancient covenant of warlocks who
worshipped the devil and practiced black magic. He was an ominous
figure whose death lay shrouded in mystery.
Bill stood
there in the store, with only a few dollars in his pocket, coveting the
book with envy burning in his soul. On impulse, he thumbed through the
book and found a spell to transport someone from one place to another.
As he said the words, he felt a surge of numbing power and heard a
deafening roar in his ears. The book store
spiraled into blackness and when he looked around, he was standing in
his living room.
Quickly, he tried a series of spells and incantations, but nothing
worked. It seemed as if the magic was gone. Driven, he
continued to experiment with the book for over three years with only
limited success. Then one night, as he sat huddled in his living room
with the candles burning low, he drew a magic circle and cast a spell
that finally brought his power to bear. From there, his
progress had been staggering. And tonight, after only a few months,
he'd cast a spell that would alter the course of his dreams. With
thoughts of power blackening his mind, he wandered off to bed.
That night
he dreamt he was lying on the beach with the blonde, edging closer
until he wrapped his arms around her. Slowly, he kissed and undressed
her, marveling at the softness of her skin and the burning velvet of
her touch. He made love to her gently, with the sound of the surf
roaring in his ears, growing louder and louder until it consumed him.
His dream ended suddenly, with the sound of his alarm clock driving him
into wakefulness. Smiling to
himself and pleased with the outcome of the night, he rolled out of
bed, and got ready for work.
That night, he stopped by the local drugstore and bought an array of
fashion and pornographic magazines. Hours later, he
was back at his kitchen table, cutting out more and more pictures of
girls and pasting them onto the picture next to him. With the candles
flickering in the darkness and sound of his voice echoing off the
shadow covered walls, he once again commanded the demons of hell to
make these images the subject of his dreams.
That
night, his dreams were lustful and frenzied. He was forceful and
demanding as he went from girl to girl, undressing and taking them with
reckless abandon. Once again, the sound of the surf grew louder and
louder, roaring in his ears like an oncoming train. In the end, it
sounded like booming laughter.
The next
morning, he was exhausted and had trouble getting out of bed. By
the time he got to work, he was late. Bill could only stammer excuses
as his boss reprimanded and belittled him in front of everyone in the
office. Afterwards, he sat seething with anger, his mind already
plotting revenge.
The boss
had been after him for quite some time. The long nights spent pouring
over magic books had left Bill tired and preoccupied. On several
occasions, he'd told off customers and told them not to come back. It
seemed that the closer he came to solving the mysteries of magic, the
less patience he had with everything and everyone around him. His
numerous attempts to date had ended in failure, leaving him empty and
twisted. His strange reputation seemed to follow him like a shadow.
With dark
murky thoughts, he stopped at the store on the way home from work and
bought the meanest, nastiest monster magazine he could find. On the
cover stood a horned creature with long, tapering fangs and fierce,
serrated claws. Its forked, blackened tongue slithered out of its mouth
and its glowing malevolent eyes burned fiery red. It was a dark, evil
demon, straight from the depths of hell.
Later that
evening, Bill sat in his kitchen, gazing at the magazine. Abruptly, he
tore off the cover with a sharp, angry yank. This should scare the
daylights out of that fat son of a bitch, he thought. Chuckling to
himself, he left the room and returned with a copy of his company
newsletter and the old, worm eaten spell book.
Snatching
up the scissors, he cut his boss' picture from the newsletter and
pasted it next to the hideous, horrifying thing on the cover. After
thumbing through the spell book and reading for a minute, he turned off
the lights and went to work.
His sleep
that night was deep and dreamless, with the ominous roar chasing him
into the daylight. He woke to the sound of cars roaring past on the
street below and laughed at himself for thinking his dreams might be
haunted.
When he
arrived at work, he found the doors locked and a note on the window.
"Due to extenuating circumstances, the Eighth Street Bank and Trust
will not be open today. We will resume regular banking hours tomorrow.
Sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused you."
Annoyed
that he'd gone through the trouble of coming to work and that no one
had bothered to call him, he stormed off in anger. Then on a whim, he
stopped at the local coffee shop to get some breakfast. He was half way
through his meal when the sound of the TV over the counter caught his
attention.
"...and
today, in the Jack-the-Ripper style slaying of New York bank executive,
Jonathon Potts, police still have no clue as to the identity of the
killer or even how the killer gained access to this plush penthouse
apartment. Metro Police Chief, Bill Stiles, had this to say ..."
He sat
their frozen, staring at the screen, with the steaming plate of eggs
getting cold in front of him. Dead? How could he be dead from something
in a dream? It was only supposed to scare the bastard, not kill him.
With questions racing through his mind, he slid off the bar stool, paid
the check and left.
When he
got home, he quietly climbed the stairs to his apartment and sat alone
in his living room, lost amidst a sea of black bound books, brooding
over his predicament. Somehow he'd killed a man. Whether it was
inadvertent or not was irrelevant. And he hadn't killed just anyone.
He'd killed his boss, a rich and powerful man who had done everything
in his power to make his life miserable. Obviously, there was no way
the police could prove he had anything to do with the man’s murder. In
fact, there was a certain amount of justice to it all.
Then a
dark, malevolent thought slithered into his mind like a black tide, and
he smiled. Grabbing a piece of paper and pen, he began to write down
the names of all the people who had crossed his path over the years.
From the steroid-crazed jock in high school who used to beat him up to
the old man at the drug store who ridiculed him for buying so many
magazines, he wrote down their names, one by one, sentencing them to
the nightmare of death.
Hours
later, he had managed to find pictures of most of them in old yearbooks
and snap shots. With meticulous care, he pasted them next to the demon.
Then, like a hooded executioner, he sealed their fate with the same
spell he’d used the night before.
As an
afterthought, he contrived a collage filled with pictures of beautiful
men and women and then pasted a picture of himself in the middle. His
dreams were filled with passion and flesh consumed under layers of
writhing bodies. He awoke covered in sweat, his sheets stained and
reeking with the odor of a dozen bodies meshed into one. The roaring
that had grown in his sleep echoed in his ears as he got up and got
dressed for work.
The news
was filled with stories of gruesome slayings and a mysterious serial
killer that stalked the streets. One woman had reported seeing a
grotesque-looking monster with 6-inch fangs and had quickly been
admitted for psychiatric evaluation. Feeling somehow satisfied, he
whistled to himself as he walked to work.
During
lunch, he went out in search of the few people left on his list,
starting with the old codger at the drug store. He made sure no one saw
him when he took the pictures and then hurried home to print them. He
was disappointed to discover his printer was out of ink.
His
collage that night was more crowded and more bizarre than the night
before. Across the pictures of men and women, he added pictures of
dwarfs, elves and other mythological creatures from a sci-fi fantasy
magazine. As an added touch, he included pictures of dogs and other
animals. When he was done, his hands were slick with sweat and it was
almost midnight.
Like an
ancient warlock, he weaved his spell until his voice roared in the
darkness and the walls shook with power. Then he fell into bed
exhausted, only to encounter a twisting, turning sea of bodies locked
in sensate turmoil. He was shocked by its blatancy, and awoke feeling
soulless with the stench from the night before wafting in his nostrils.
It wasn't until he was at work that the roaring in his ears had finally
subsided.
After
work, he picked up a printer cartridge and raced home, dreaming of
vengeance unrealized. Like a vulture, he eyed the freshly printed
pictures and then pasted them onto the page with the hideous demon from
hell. He hummed to himself as he worked.
When the
spell had been cast, he turned on the lights and sat at the table,
smoking a cigarette, staring at the demon in front of him. In the harsh
florescent light, the demon looked more lifelike than ever before, with
bits of spittle dripping from its fangs and its seething eyes boring
holes through him. With shaking
hands, he pulled the picture forward, afraid it might come to life and
devour him. He laughed again when he thought about the old man at the
drug store and how sorry he'd be in the morning.
He was
relishing this thought when he glanced down at the picture of the store
keeper. It was slightly blurry, taken through the front window of the
drug store and shadowed by the gray awning that hung over the front
door. Reflected in the store's front window was the image of the
sidewalk across the street. He could even see the mailbox and the fire
hydrant he was standing next to when he took the picture. And then to
his
shock and horror, he saw his reflection in the store window.
A chill
swept over him as the terror of the situation dawned on him.
Scrambling, he ran into the other room and pulled out his spell book.
That's when he heard a scratching at the window.
Startled, he spun around and gaped at the window with his heart welling
in his throat. Seconds later, the scratch came again, louder and more
insistent.
"Go away."
His voice was a harsh whisper in the silence.
"Go away!
By the power of darkness and all that is unholy, I beseech you, I
implore you, nay, I command you. Leave me alone!” His voice
boomed like a hollow drum.
The sound
of shattering glass answered from the other room.
"Nooooooo!"
He ran into the hallway and struggled to pull open the front door, but
the locks wouldn't turn. He was still trying to get the door open when
something grabbed him from behind.
