Celestial Obsequies:
Xuthal of the Dusk[1]
[The following text is a transcription of the evening of
Monday, October 16, 2006 minutes. Presiding in the tribunal meeting are Rev. Z.
N. Fitzgerald, Rev. G.C. Simmons, and Rev. S.M. McMasters. The meeting follows
the report by a Presbyterian minister, K.L. Haddock. out of
Fitzgerald: Rev. Haddock, This very unorthodox! For this intrusion seems such a minute matter. If not for Rev. Braunstein’s [Rev. K.M. Braunstein, Pittsburgh PA] request…Rev Haddock, if not for Rev. Braunstein, your request would not have been granted.
Simmons: I must agree, Rev. Haddock. This entire event is rather, well, unprecedented.
Haddock: If I may speak…
McMasters: One moment Sir. I wish to voice my agreement with the Tribunal. If we knew these particulars in advance and the fantastical nature of the story, we might all have slept better this night. Geez, it’s storming…
Haddock: All the more reason for me to speak. I would not waste the Tribunals time if I did not feel it urgent. And, as you have already stated, Rev. Braunstein recommended my presences before you. [On the tape, there is a shuffling, as if papers are quickly moved]. Implying at least his understanding of the urgency! Where should I start?
Fitzsgerald: I would imagine you should start with the most important material so we can quickly decided on its relevance to the court’s time.
Haddock: Then let me begin with the beginning, which will set the tone of this poor souls tale. A tale you must hear. If you don’t mind, I have already compiled a written testimony.
Simmons: Let the minutes show that Rev. Haddock has presented a written testimony. Oh, Fiztsgerald.
Fitsgerald: I didn’t bring my glasses. Perhaps Rev. Haddock would mind reading his testimony?
Haddock: If it pleases the Tribunal. [he clears his throat] On Sunday morning, I received a phone call…
McMasters: Please, Rev. Haddock, would you speak louder.
Fitsgerald: Louder, indeed.
Haddock: My apologies sirs. Early Sunday morning, around
4:30 AM, I received a phone call from
McMasters: Rev. Haddock, may I remind you that we do not have much time tonight. There are other pressing matters on the agenda!
Haddock: You may remind me, yes. On the other hand, I would move quicker if not for the constant interruption. [indifferent, non-verbal noises are made]. As I was saying, Ash [Ashley Haddock, Rev. Haddock’s spouse] received a call. After she decided it was not a prank, as we had been experiencing annoying calls as of late, she woke me. I was informed of a dying man in need of a Minister. I informed them it was rather outside my practice, especially on a Sunday before service, to make deathbed calls.
Fitsgerald: Outside your practice, Rev. Haddock? Is it not he duty of the church to offer God’s comforting grace no matter our own personal needs?
Haddock: Yes…It is a duty. On the other hand, is it not also
my duty to provide an euthastic, spiritual message to my congregation? There
are other means to comfort the dying, mainly the hospital chaplain, in which, I
need not remind the Tribunal,
McMasters: Who were you talking to Rev? A Triage nurse?
Haddock: No, Rev. McMasters. Actually it was a young boy
named
Simmons: A young Boy?
Haddock: Yes. Named
Fitzsimmons: Didn’t this seem strange to you?
Haddock: Very, Rev Fitzsimmons, but considering the
distraught nature of the caller, and my increasing state of awakening, I
decided it worth investigating. After I decided to head to the Hospital, I
asked of the patient’s name and room number. ’
I arrived at the Hospital at approximately
5:15 AM. A boy of about 18 years of age met me at the emergency room doors. He
introduced himself as “the
Fitzsimmons: Just out of personal curiosity, did this ‘
Haddock: Strange as it may sound, he did not volunteer any knowledge of knowing the man himself, though the man would later claim to have known him.
Simmons: You did not think to ask?
Haddock: Well, I didn’t think it necessary to ask,
considering the dire atmosphere about the Hospital. AS it was, I was led to the
room and then ‘
McMasters: Dire? Perhaps the boys were criminals, especially
given the “out the back” disparrearce of this ‘
Haddock: Yes, I am certain. Let me continue. [a grunt of
approval]. I entered into Room 157, where I saw a shocking sight. Laying on the
bed before me was a badly beaten man. A nurse next to the bed greeted me as
‘father’ and ushered me to a chair. She proceeded with various states of
medical tests most unfamiliar to me. Some time passed before I realized
Simmons: Did the boy speak?
Haddock: Very much so. I assumed he was unconscious at first, since the he did not look up to meet the nurse’s compassionate gaze. He simply laid catatonic, both eyes wide open. Honestly, I felt uncomfortable in the room, wondering if the boy laying on the bed was even capable of a conversation, let alone any type of spiritual conversion..
McMasters: Conversation? Haddock, less detail and more import!
Simmons: Rev. McMasters, please. Rev. Haddock, why do you say the boy need ‘conversion’
Haddock: Regretfully, the boy seemed, well…
Fitzsimmons: Rev. Haddock, you may continue. We are not here under any inquiry into your actions. The church is fully satisfied with your spiritual attributes and practices. It was you that sought our consultation. You may continue without fear of repercussion.
Haddock: Sir, it is guilt which holds my tongue, and not personal fear. I regret my immediate labeling of the boy as, for lack of better terminology, drug trash.
McMasters: the boy was a drug user?
Haddock: Not at all, Rev. But..
Simmons: But the boy looked like one.
Haddock: It was his eyes, Reverends. They were glassed over with the sensation of induced euphoria. Had I known the true catalyst for this gloss-eyed facada, I would not feel so regretful now. I struggle with these types of categorizations.
Simmons: Only the lord knows the true hearts of men, Haddock. It is the true actions of man, through a judicial eyes, which advises his faculties. ‘Let he without fault cast the first stone’. It is not the actual judgment which is at fault, but the agency granted that judgment.
McMasters: “Judge not, least ye be judged!”
Simmons: In this case, Rev. McMasters, we are not teaching biblical scripture to children. We are dealing with stereotypical repercussions for ministerial advice. Rev. Haddock is right in his caution for fear of his own physical being; He is not necessarily passing a condemnation on the boy, as much as preserving his own well-being.
Haddock: He was not a hedonist.
McMasters: We are all hedonistic.
Haddock: True, but the gratification of his physical body came only after the appeasement of his spirituality! Though, he might have bickered with this defense…but let me continue. As I was nearing the end of both my patience and my fortitude, I stood to find coffee. It was this action which spurred the first response from the invalid.
As I was walking past his bed side, a sickened hand grasped the sleeve of my coat. Jumping, I thought I had been injured. Some great wave of….feeling came with the touch. “What is your name?” was the response to my concern. “Haddock” I replied. He, looking up at me, smiled. “Rev. Haddock, please sit back down. You will not be weary for long.” I did not at first comply. “Please, Reverend. Let me die with a guiltless conscience.” I sat. “I want to tell you a story, Reverend. I want to tell you about how I came to be like this.” I nodded my head, “I do not do confessions, son. That is between you and God.” He, smiling a broken smile, said, “I will have time enough to debate God. This confession is for you.” Hauntingly, he leaned in, “There are things at work which no modern man can understand!” He lay back against his bed.
Now, I do not need to tell you reverends, how many of my nerves frayed. I knew the boy was delusional from his tongue, as articulate as it sounded. Whatever drug the boy was on, made it sound, at the time, at least rationally conceived.
McMasters: Did the boy continue?
Haddock: much so. Sitting upon the chair, I dug deep into that Christian stoicism earned by veteran ministers, and prepared for a long morning. Prodding him gently with my left hand, I urged his testimony. “What happened? Who did this to you?” He sat up and look at me, “You are not ready to know that.” For the first time since I arrived, he closed his eyelids tight. Slight tears swelled under his eyelids. Opening again, they appeared streaked with a torment unlimited in corporeal realization. I was not certain where to begin, nor certain where I was even responsible for this awkward situation. Part of me wished to go back Home and allow the boy to die with his own surreal mentality fissured.
McMasters: Rev. Haddock, do you plan on continuing with these ‘prose’ readings? I am having trouble following you.
Simmons: Unfortunately Rev Haddock, I must agree with Rev. McMasters. Can explain in a more concise manor?
Haddock: Sirs, I learned long ago that the true power in a story comes from the words telling it, and not the story itself. It is within these “prose” tellings that we find authority and authenticity. You of all people should understand the strict interpretation and diction required in moral narratives!
As I was saying, while I was stuck arguing with myself, the dying man extended his pale hand. “Things begin with names, Rev. Haddock. My name is Jeff.” I shook his hand gently, though he clasped down on my fingers tightly. He continued, “My father told me when I was younger, that you always lock you hand in tight, and firm, because other men judge you by your handshake. Do you do that, Rev. Haddock?” Looking him in the eyes, I tighten my grip to a strength equal to his. “No. It is against my nature to see fault in physicality”. “Interesting, I was no talking of fault though,” he replied, “I was talking of strength. I will begin here, since we are in need of a beginning. The physical touch of man, that base connection in which we call ‘reality’ only exists between men and other base beasts. It does not help men, such as you and I, Rev Haddock, touch God. Why do we seek to touch the untouchable?”
“I’m afraid, Jeff, I do not understand you’re line?” I shook my head.
“To begin with, Rev, you must understand there is no line to my thinking. Lines aren’t real, but theoretical, and function similar to racist stereotyping or archetypal categorizing. They function to allow the wandering mind to see order in disorder, to see familiarity in a universe thrown together by the God of ADD.”
“I’m afraid you’re speaking of entropy as if it applies to society? Isn’t this all outside the necessity of this moment?” I could not help but think I had fallen into a weaken mind’s final irrationalities. “Perhaps we should focus on the moment…”
He seemed agitated, coughing with a wet violence, “If you are referring to me dying, you should let me worry about bringing my story to light before my eminent demise. As to the entropy comment, I am talking about reality, and not theory. Regardless of the order supposed to exists, there is no order to the human mind. It is irrational, it is entropic, and it hates its own existence until it losses it.”
“My friend, perhaps we should speak of the Father to see the rationalizing faculties of the human mind.”
“We will have time for the gods in moments. First, Do you understand what I have just said to you?” I nodded, hoping to urge the boy along in his deathbed ranting. “I’m not saying this for my Health.”
“I understand,” I told him.
McMasters: For the benefit of the Tribunal, how about summarizing what was said?
Haddock: [sighing] Sirs, I do not know exactly the underlying meaning, I am only relating to you what was said. Now, please sirs, we haven’t much time…The weather is getting worse.
Simmons: The storm has been on us for two days now, I don’t think it will let up anytime soon. I was suppose to go fishing earlier this morning…
Fitsgerald: As this rate, you can fish outside the window in an hour! [Group laughter] Please, Rev. Haddock, you may continue. We will not interrupt again.
Haddock: where was I?
Simmons: The boy was ranting about theoretical indifference and irrationality.
Haddock: Oh right. The actual theoretical conversation ended there. After he was assured of my comprehension, or at least was satisfied with my complacency, continued speaking. “The story I am about to begin,” he rasped gently, somewhere in his chest a wet sucking resounded. “…is difficult to believe. I think…You’ll understand my present condition much better after…” He extended his hand to me, dropping a small hard object into my hands. “We begin, ‘for tomorrow never comes until its too late”. With the sound of mechanical humming in the background, the injured man began his tale.
I was invited to teach in a small
classroom just south of
A few weeks past in the class, before I was invited to some dinner-conference to discuss future creative programs. Had K___ not forced me into going, I would have stayed home. Though I could bring a guest, K___ herself was required at some graduate meeting in her department preventing her accompanying me. I, in an attempt to preemptively deal with boredom, opted to take Nathanael Wagle with me. A locksmith out of southwestern Pa, he had been my best friend for decade or more.
Obviously, given the rather mudane nature of the conference, I expected to find the company invited as equally boring as their conferences. When I arrived at the restaurant, a classy place by rumor, I found myself alienated both in expectations and in ‘class.’ After all, leather brown coats were not proper attire for professionals styling themselves philanthropist. When I presented my invitation, the guy at the door—though I do not know his positional title—read my name silently. He ran his finger on the invitation, “Jeffrey Squires? You’re the author?” I rolled my eyes, “I started poor, and I’m afraid the disease is in my blood.” It was his turn to roll his eyes. “N. Wagle? Professional security services?”—Nathan smiled at me. I suppose, in some part of the world, locksmiths were professional.
“You may follow me,” he led us to our table. I know nothing of fine-dining etiquette. I never understood how eating food made you better or worse in morality, though I’m sure someone would squabble with me. As it was, we had shown up early for dinner and the table was empty. Seeing the bar was open, I turned to Nathan. I had time to catch him as he started before the thought had past my mind.
“May I help you, sirs?” the bartender greeted us with a smile. It was a typical thing with these bartenders to deal poison with a smile.
“Anything good on tap?” Nathan asked. Knowing the man’s taste in alcohol to be of a caliber beyond the scope of his economic standing, I knew the bartender already had mistaken his inquiry.
“Well, we have Coors and Bud…”
Nathan leaned in, his broad chest touching the bar top, “I said good, not piss” he whispered to the man. With a flash of his wrist, a wad of cash pinned in a money clip made recompense for his vulgarity, “We’ll try again, What do you have on tap?”
“We have two lagers and a stout.”
“Now we’re talking my language. Sam?”
“Samuel Adams, sir.” The bartender was already pouring his glass when he asked me, “and?”
“Yeung, please.” I found along time ago that drinking Yeungling separated me from any ‘class’. When you were in a bar, they gave you grief for your uppity taste; when you were in fine-dining, they wanted you to drink a sifter of Hennessey.” Nathan, smiling with the first cold taste of American lager, threw Andrew Jackson on the bar, and we walked away.
We arrived back at the table to find company seated before us. I shifted the lighter in my pocket, a nervous tick I had picked up with the lighter, and spoke for the both of us. “Good afternoon.” Seated directly across from us was and elderly couple. From my guess, they were in their early seventies.
The man stood and extended his hand. “Henderson, Marvin. This is my wife Ang.”
“Jeff Squires,
this is Nathanael Wagle.” Nathan shook Marvin’s hand and nodded to Ang. “We’re
pleased to meet you.” Marvin was a banker out of
After some small talk, we sat and awaited the rest of the guest. It was not long before the rest of the guest arrive. The table sat a total of eight people, though we would only be joined by one more couple and a lone man. The couple consisted of one Mr. Andy Smith, a law professor at Pitt, and his wife, an accountant in the city. After some brief discussion over Pitt and Duquesne law programs—and a few snide pokes from both sides—I wrote off the couple as being insipid professionals of philanthropy. The last gentlemen was an intrigue—thankfully—compared to the other yuppie couples. Nothing against the yuppies, but I’d rather not waste my time talking about their shopping and pseudo political preferences when I could be talking about something truly important, like sponsoring a book.
“Professor Adman,
of
“Squires,” I introduced myself again, “This is Nathanael. He’s a Personal Security expert.” Nathan extended his hand, ignoring my jest. Introductions rounded the table. “Out of Curiosity, professor, what exactly are you a professor of?”
“Of many things, mostly agnostic theory!.” He laughed loudly. I smiled; he continued. “I’m a sociologist. Your area is quite the hotspot for research these days! And, being more an ethnologist, if you get my drift, this is the place to be!” Neither Nathan or myself joined in the table’s laughter.
I asked, hoping that I misunderstood his ‘drift’. “What ethnicity are you studying in Southwestern—“
“Western,” Smith correct me. I annoyingly glanced at the lawyer.
“Western, PA?”
“I just recently moved to the area, actually. Compiling most of my information Hillman and Paterno/Patee, I figured I’d get some first hand information. That’s what sells, you know, first hand information.” It seemed that, though first hand information sold, the table had grew weary of him already, and small talk signaled the table’s dismal of him. Other than Nathan and myself, who—mostly because of his proximity to us— continued listening. “I’ve recently been doing research on Opium Eaters?”
“As in People that ‘eat’ Opium?” I asked, rather confused about the reference. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I remembered a Romantics class. By this time, the other couples had were engulfed in private conversation less taboo to their sensibilities. In fact, other than Nathan and myself, the table felt alienated.
“There’s a cult of them just around the corner in Xuthal.”
“Xuthal? Never heard of it,” Nathan explain, swigging back the remainder of his Beer. With a nod to the bar, he strolled away to acquire another drink.
I looked to the professor. Despite Nathan’s silent warning not to get involved, that side of me that enjoyed mysteries needed involved. “You’re investigating drug addicts in Xuthal?” I lowered my voice to fit the accusation.
He shrunk his shoulders, “What is your business, Mr. Squires.”
“My business?”
“Your trade, sir?”
“I deal in theories and absolutes.”
“And your occupation?”
“If you had to say I had an occupation, then I would say I teach. As to my lifestyle, I am a person interested in mythos.”
The professor asked in a solemn voice, “Would you be interested in accompanying me to a certain….meeting ground for these ‘sleepers’.”
Nathan returned with a fresh Yeungling. I turned and accepted the cold lager, “We’re going to Xuthal…” he shook his head, “after dinner.” He nodded. The conversation ended with that and the conference continued. It was a long and tedious crawl from that point on. For the most part, the conference members simply discussed how the year had move along, and how they expected it to pick up or slow down depending on the “continued efforts of its members”. I like to think of it as a “no lose” policy. Either way, it’s the ‘members’ fault.
Dinner was served following the first three speakers. Stuffed chicken, some fancy vegetable thing, and ‘weed’ salad. I didn’t know stuff chicken was cuisine. A slow band played songs spurring memories, mostly movie references for Nathan and myself. A paino player played a few Billy Joel songs by himself. Marvin and his wife slowed danced, sliding a twenty into the piano jar. As the conference finally began to wind down, Nathan rose for a final drink—a “night cap, as they say in the movies.” The professor stood, draping his coat over his shoulders.
I stood as well. “Professor, are you headed out?” I drew out the final word.
“Are you and your partner interested. Its only a short trip. You can ride with me if you’d like.” I blinked. “Or you can follow me.”
“We’ll follow you,” I said as he walked away. Nathan came back with a plastic glass. “He wanted us to ride with him.”
“What’s he think, ‘we need the money’? We’ll drive. I’d rather not get killed tonight.” Nathan twirled his keys like a six-shooter.
“How drunk are you?” I asked.
“Ginger Ale, asshole” he shouldered into his coat. “sober enough to kick your ass”
“Yeah, great.” We climbed into Nathan’s Nova—A big block V8 from our youth. It was old when he got it, it grew older with us. Part of me would forever remember him by it.—With a roar of the engine, Nathan grabbed the slap-shift and pulled it into gear. With a roar of the glasspacks, we followed the professors black BMW.
I
Haddock: I had listened to the first part of his story with a tiring patience. I could not help the hour of night, but my own fortitude began to stray. The boy continued, the soft buzzing of the hospital reminded us both of his condition. As it was, he told the story with a grace that even the living might have idolized.
The highway led us to the small
town of
“This place is a shithole,” Nathan shivered.
“How we doing?” I asked.
Nathan looked at me, a grimace his most prominent feature, and turned the Nova around a corner. “We’d be doing better at home.” He glanced over to me. “Yeah well, looks like its about to start.” The professor pulled into a spot across from a Xuthal Hotel; Nathan parked behind him.
“If someone had told me there were still Opium Eaters in PA, I would have said they were from Uniontown; but, I would have said they lived in a Hotel,” I explained. Nathan nodded in agreement.
“Trunk?” He knew my answer from the building itself. Standing roughly nine stories, it was the largest building in Xuthal. A large sign blinking “Hotel” buzzed like a shitty film noir movie. Had it been a film noir, I would expect one of us to die in that hotel. Thankfully, the reality of the situation meant neither Nathan, the professor, or myself were detectives. Besides, there was a femme fatale in the last adventure. Regardless, the building did not look like it had any occupants, and the sign seemed too much like a silent siren for me. With a large, single fire door its only visible entrance, the Hotel awaited our approach.
“Yeah.” Nathan, as I had observed, had already begun unpacking his ‘trunk’. Out of the Nova, Nathan slid a small snub-nose .44 into his coat pocket. Shutting the trunk, he walked towards me. As the professor approached, he slid a .38 special into my hand. “We ready?”
“I have some more if we need it in my coat.”
“Some more?” The professor asked casually.
“Mints, Professor.” He pulled out a single, wrapped mint. “Want one?” Nathan handed the professor what was mostly likely his last mint. I quietly slipped the old police gun into my coat. The thing about academics is, as long as they don’t know you have a weapon for protection, they benefit in quiet gratitude the can’t express. This rather condescending thought never crossed my mind at the time. It was, after all, only a bias concept.
“You boys ready?” The professor started towards the Hotel.
“Just out of curiosity, prof. Do you know anyone here?”
“Boys, do you think I’d just launch into this type of excursion without a full strategy? A young college, vir doctissimus et amicus meus, has for two months been involved in the same cult in which we, in the utmost of secrecy, are going to observe tonight.” He stopped at the edge of the door. “By phone, we have gone to great lengths to pierce the rather intrinsic vagaries of the cult.”
“Vagaries, professor?”
“Yes, the cult has a rather unprecedented eclectic schedule.” He removed a key from under an unnoticed floor mat. “They sleep day and night, only awakening to shuffle about their ruined habitat, and then return to their euphoric dreaming. I say euphoric for they often will moan in orgasimically. Upon first hear, if not for my scientific training and academic professionalism, I feared I would either laugh or run.”
“Sounds like college life,” I said to Nathan. We both laughed at the doctors disgust. “In all seriousness, is their any danger to be expected?”
“Expected danger? Not at all. This is a research experiment, my friends, and I am a professor!” Assay he may expect, but I had a background in misadventure and misfortune. I expected what I always expected, the worse possible scenario, which normally ended with me being overtly paranoid. Except for those two time when my precautions saved my life. “Either way, boys, we have only several hours before sunrise, and I’d like to be in bed by then.”
Professor Adman pushed the doorway open. Only the darkness of unlit hallways greeted us, a slow creeping stillness so familiar to my nightmares. Despite the Professor’s previous daft glee, he now stood silently in the door jam. Could it be that he was unprepared for the dismal reality of the cult? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I put my hand on the Professor’s shoulder; a shiver awoken him. He pressed forward with the renewed strength and urged Nathan I to follow. We did so, though Nathan, unaccustomed to the night’s darkness—only the foreshadowing of the dire consequences of our intrusion—he hesitated. Setting an example, I stepped forward. Shutting the door behind him, he followed in my wake.
We found ourselves in a long hallway with two doors on either side. The debris from countless years scattered the floor and an apocalyptic atmosphere dominated my view. Our only light source, barely visible from our stand point, came through a small window on the opposite end of the hall. Fast food wrappers, beer bottles, and other collections of gluttony laid about the crumbled dry wall. On our left stood an opening which probably once served as the Check-In desk. Though it was separated by a wall running between the room and our hallway, we could see into the room quiet clearly. All that remained of the desk was the wooden letter slots, all empty, and a rotten chair. It was, to say the least, less than habitable.
“Nathan,” I whispered to him. He nodded. I’m not quite certain why it reassured me he was behind me, but, perhaps, after my many experiences, I still worried of being alone in the dark.
My fear was shared by the Professor as well. “When I was a boy, this place was run down.” The professor informed us, “it used to be a dare to come in here. And, back then, there still people here!”
Nathan, unconsciously fingering something inside his coat, reminded, “There are still people here, Professor. Remember, we’re here to spy on them.”
“Right,”
he answered. “
“Who’s
Stepping
out from under the desk, a young boy answered, “I am
“This is your—“
The Professor ignored my question as he
stepped towards the segregated Check-in. Though they shook hands, it was clear
this was the Professor’s first meeting with
Nathan, lacking my tact, verbally expressed his annoyance. “What you doing here Kid? This is the kinda place you get killed in.”
“My
sentiments exactly, Nathan.”
“You want me to take a look?” I asked him, fingering the .38 in my pocket.
“It’s clear. They’re all above us,” he paused and added the inevitable, “for now. Enter, I’ll explain everything. I put a candle on the desk two days ago. It should still be there. I don’t have any matches—”
“I have a lighter. In the room everyone,” Nathan pushed the professor gently forward before shutting the door behind all of us. As he stepped into the room, he leaned into my ear, “I think we should get the hell out of here while we can. This is going to get bad. That Admin is an idiot, and he’s got a kid running this scheme of his.” I shook my head slightly and held up a finger. He muttered, “I’m not carrying you out of here” and stood back.
“
“The
light first.”
“Someday,
The young boy smiled. “My sister has been kidnapped. Two weeks ago. She’s only 14.”
“Slower,” I said softly. “Your thirteen year old sister was kidnapped two weeks ago?”
“Fourteen,” he corrected. Nathan sighed behind me. It was an honest mistake, I thought to myself. “We live down the street, near the hospital, with my father. He used to work in the Steel Mill before it was closed…I guess that was like 20 years ago, before I was born. I called the police when she didn’t come home from school. I told them I knew she was here, but they couldn’t find her. I’ve looked myself for sometime, and I know she is here, but…”
“How do you know she is here?” I asked, “This isn’t the best of places, I know, but how do you know she is here?”
“I fail to see what this had to do with—”
“I know because I brought her here a day before she disappeared. The day before Buck season, I had to walk her home from school. We were on the way home and I saw this place and, well, we were fighting so I ran in front and hid just inside the door, right behind that desk where you guys saw me. Then she came in and, well, I shut the door and ran home. After she didn’t come in an hour. I came back and looked everywhere I could. Then I called the cops and told them I saw her run in here and we couldn’t find her.” He paused for a time, composing himself—or recomposing—and began again with a huff. “I didn’t lock the door, and it was unlocked when I came back here to look for her. That has to me that someone grabbed her.”
Nathan, standing solemnly behind me still, asked, “How do you know that she didn’t get nabbed outside the building?”
“I don’t, but this was my best guess. And…” He looked at the professor, “I’ve been doing some internet research on the site. Your name came up professor.”
The Professor, who had till this time been staring rather absent mindly into the gloom, shook his head quietly. “what was that?”
“He said you’re wrapped up in this!” Nathan burst, “So pay attention!”
“Professor, how did you find out about these opium-eaters in the first place?” I asked, hoping to take the edge off Nathan’s agitation.
“Well, I was doing some research on local cults…”
“I thought you said you were an ethnologist?” I remind him.
“What the hell is an ethnologist?”
“It’s an obsolete racist.” I informed Nathan. “They’re Imperial profilers—“
“Now, son—“
“That pretend to gather information about different ethnicities and pass them off as theories. All-in-all, they get money from universities to prove statistic that somehow seep money from the government’s scholastic grants for moot theoretical information that neither helps those it claims nor rights those wrongs it causes.”
The professor, who took my rather angst-ridden criticism with a grain-‘f-salt, did not correct either my reminder of his joke or my pun on ‘empirical’ poorly. Instead, he laughed awkwardly. “Well, friends, even we sociologist need to make money somehow. So, I was contact by my ex-wife’s publicists and asked to write something about local cultist.”
“And it just so happened that the first cultist group you discovered actually existed?” I asked. “Because, it was the information on your webpage which first compelled Brandon to contact you; furthermore, not more than a coincidental search of his local town’s name, and the coincidental proximately to his house, which somehow brought us all together.”
Nathan, growing frustrated with the affair, burst his exaggeration out. “Let me get this all straight. Your sister gets kidnapped. You get scared, call the cops, the cops can’t find her so you contact the professor? Who, for some reason, attends a meeting and drags me and,” he indicated me, “this jackass—who is conveniently invited to a charity convention—and somehow we all get tied up in a kidnapping in bum-fuck-Egypt! You’ve got to be kidding!”
I understood the absurdity immediately. Somehow, in the long length of time since I first found myself in dire’s hateful gaze, coincidence did more than prove god’s existence to me. They now, for a strange truthful moment, proved to me that a trite deity was writing my poorly drawn-out existence.
The Professor
touched his hand, “We’ll do what we can.” Despite a scornful laugh coming from
behind,
I looked to both of them, figuring Nathan and I would be unwilling pawns in yet another adventure. “Tell me of the cult and we’ll do what we can.”
“From the beginning.” I informed him.
Between the two of
them—the Professor speaking from past research and
The cult, sometime
in the late 40’s, found themselves kicked out of
“Well,” I said after finally listening to all the information, “it seems we know at least where to start in the matter. Do we go though the locked door and try to find Liz, or do we call the cops and go home for the night?”
“You can’t go, the cops won’t do anything! They never do, and,” he muttered under his breath, “they said they were going to arrest me if they came back out here.”
“Great,” Nathan sighed.
“I’m afraid this is outside my line of work,” the Professor stood. “I think that there are professionals for this kind of activity.”
“Sit down,
Professor. You got yourself into this, and, matter-of-fact, you drug both me
and Nathan into it as well. You’re going to stay and see it out.” The professor
began to protest, but Nathan shoved him lightly into the chair. “
“Honestly, I didn’t really see him, but he walked pretty briskly. He didn’t seem too, I don’t know, sickly. I need your help! You have to open the door!” Frantically, he rubbed his hands together. Nathan stared bitterly ahead, and the Professor bemoaned in whispered breaths.
It occurred to me I had not introduced myself. “My name is Jeff by the way. I said we’d get your sister back, and that’s what we’re going to do. Tonight.”
II
Simmons: Mr. Haddock, though the story is rather […] intriguing, I’d think there was a point?
Haddock: Sir, we have barely scratched the surface! The young man, even in his dying state, managed to continue the longevity of his story with an amazing strength! Besides, we’re coming to the introduction of, well, the point.
Fitzsimmons: Rev. Haddock, please continue.
Haddock: Of course. Where was I, we had just seen the locked door…
The unmarked door to
the upstairs floor was most definitely locked. Thankfully, Nathan, owner of one
of the largest locksmiths in
“Ready?”
“You go after me, Professor your next, Nathan,” I gestured towards the back. Sliding the .38 from my coat, I cupped my left hand under the pommel and kept the weapon before me. It wasn’t my .40, but it made nice holes none-the-less.
The Professor seemed immediately agitated when he saw the weapon. “Is that necessary?”
“There are worse things in life than guns, Professor. You’d had better pray we don’t run into them.” I explained steeping onto the first stair. Cautiously we made our way up the staircase. Each step, I half expect to be met with some instance of violence. It had become as casually expected as a needle’s prick in a doctor’s office. This was, of course, the worst of my adventurous conditioning. I looked on death as students looked on exams: they were a necessary evil compiled and orchestrated to test ones fiber. It was a shame, that the exchange rate was so dissimilar, and a life paid the forfeit of the test.
Breaching the first floor, I peered through the dented fire door. The hallway was blocked by a collection of furniture and smashed boxes. It was clear that the barricade was mean to section off the rooms into some type of pattern. It worried me. I did not like the idea of a consciousness at work within this building; I had hoped for dilapidated resistance at the best. Keeping the door to my back, I looked backwards away from the barricade. Other than a hotel room door, a lone window decorated the back wall. Satisfied the area was safe, I stepped into the hallway.
“I locked the door. Who knows how many of these monkeys are prowling around outside, but they won’t know we’re here so easily.” He kept his right hand firmly on the revolver in his pocket, gently strengthening the subtle concern in his eyes. “I don’t see how these people put up with walking around in this crap—“
“They don’t,” the Professor said afar. He had opened the bedroom door and proceeded alone into the unexplored room. I could tell already he would be a problem for our covert search. “You see,” which we obviously could not in the hallway, “they lay dormant, like a strange induced hibernation, for a period of time. I explained all this earlier.”
“You guys had better come in here!”
“Is he dead?” Nathan asked. In my peripheral vision, I saw the blue tinting of Nathan’s .44.
I leaned past the Professor, who prodded the body with a chalkboard pointer, and felt the man’s neck. With two fingers, I could barely detect a subtle pulse. Science fiction aside, he seemed like he was in a coma. “Comatose.”
“Suspended animation,” exclaimed the Professor.
“He’s passed out, you mean,”
“It means, for the most part, we should consider aspects of the legend as truth. So far, we have a drug, and we have,” I touched the fabric of his clothing, “some strange clothing, though I don’t know if that signifies a cult. As to the cult, we know nothing of a god or even an artificial one. Your sister has yet to leave us any clues.” I turned to Nathan. “Do you think we should leave them here or take them with us?”
Both the Professor and
“Frankly, I think we should call the police and get the hell out of here. Since that’s not an opinion,” He paused awaiting for an argument, seeing no hope in sight, he continued, “I say we leave them here. Tie him up,” Nathan pointed to the unconscious cultist, “and lock yourselves in till we get back. Two knocks then a third,” he knocked out the rhythm on the wall, creating a passcode to get into the room. “If you hear another, you bale and call the cops.”
The Professor chimed in, rubbing
“Have you ever even shot a gun?” Nathan asked.
The Professor, becoming indignant, began spouting rhetoric, “I find them innately evil.”
“Its no more innately evil than a hammer.” I corrected, losing what little patience I had.
“Nor does a hammer have the connotation of violence attached to it!” The Professor responded.
“If they’re vile, then why do you want one? Hypocrite!” Nathan, raising his voice, walked towards the Professor.
“Enough!”
I imagine no one enjoyed being
reprimanded, especially not by a seventeen-year-old highschooler, but there it
was. I suppose we all had composure at stake in that room, and
Nathan found the whole event rather humorous,
laughing in what might have been considered approval. The Professor rolled his
eyes, muttering to himself about ‘hysteria” and “fanatics.” I couldn’t think of
anything to say to save my ego; so, I let it go. “Fine. You and the Professor
come with me,” I turned to the Professor, “You stay with Nathan, and don’t you
move unless he’s with you!”
Nathan, pulling a long black zip-tie from inside his coat, snuggly tied the man’s hand behind his back. Then, stooping near his feet, he pulled the sandals from his feet and slid them under the bed frame. I don’t know his point in doing so, but it seemed sound enough at the time. Convinced the man was sufficiently inconvenienced, he gave me a thumbs up. I opened the door gently.
The building, laid out in sometype of square—I guess, I never did figure out the pattern exactly—dumped us out into a parallel hallway. Growing weary of the ruble laying about, the only thing really to note in the new hallway was a black man lying face first in the dirt. He bore a similar cotton robe as the previous man we stumbled upon. Nathan zipped tied him as well, sliding the strip mercilessly down onto his wrists. We moved onto to the nearest door, #112, and I opened the door.
The room bore a similar resemblance
to the previous room, and the repetition of our adventure was becoming
monotonous.
Suddenly, with all the reaction speed of a sly viper, the massive man was on us. I felt a great force against the back of my head, causing me to stumble into the fire door with a loud thud. There was a shout, someone broke glass, and a scream. My vision swirled as I put a hand under my chest and pushed myself off the floor. Someone shouted again, and I heard a sobbing. Turning my head, I saw Nathan mercilessly punching the cultist in the ribs with one free hand while attempting to maintain control of a broken bottle with the other. The Cultist, roughly the same muscular size of Nathan, found grimaced and slowly lowered the glass bottle towards Nathan’s face. Behind the two fo them, Brandon snuck with a large piece of wood. I saw no signs of the Professor, but sprinkles of blood marked a rush from the room.
Getting my feet beneath me, I rose in time to see the cultist force Nathan away with one unrealistic shove. Nathan stumbled under his feet and collapsed on his back. The cultist turned his attention to Brandon, who broke the rotten wood over the side of his face. Unphased, the man grabbed him by the throat and launched him across the room, as one my toss a wet towel.. It was about this time I realized I had—as always—lost track of my pistol. Instead, the cultist turned to me with the broken bottle. He rushed towards me.
Facing the rushing man, I lowered my
body weight on my knees and got under him. His swing, checked by my step into
his charge, sent his body weight up and over my shoulder. I let him continue, a
simple judo move much easier than it seemed, and felt him roll safely behind
me. Nathan had time to stand, the .44 snapped up and directed at the man.
“Stay the fuck down,” Nathan ordered, the large bored handgun eagerly wishing to vent. Surprisingly, rational intelligence kept the cultist from moving.
“Where’s the Professor?” I demanded. Nathan never moved his head, instead, his focused gaze was locked eye in and eye with the large cultist on the floor.
“Come on,” I said to
“Let me see,” I walked towards him. The Professor was staring at nothing, his eyes oddly distant and unfocused. It worried me, mostly because I thought the wound was non-life threatening. Pulling my dress shirt back over my chest, I stooped next to the professor. “Let me see the cut, Professor.” The laceration bled from between his fingers. Still, the professor refused to let me see the wound. Quickly reaching down, I grabbed his right ear and yanked it. He screamed, reaching his good hand away from the wound and gripping my forearm. “I need to stop the bleeding!”
“You’re making it worse!”
“It’s going to get worse if you
don’t let go of my arm,” I said to the Professor. His hazel eyes twitched in an
unconscious manner. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I thought the man was
losing it. Still, he slackened his grip on my arm. Quickly, I draped the cravat
around his forearm, where three, four-inch lacerations bled profusely. With a
little help from
The Professor stood, shook his head,
but did not speak. “Are you okay?” I asked, gently resting a hand on his
shoulder. He shook his head ‘yes’. “Okay, Nathan’s waiting for us.”
I had rounded the doorjam, had just
seen Nathan with the .44 trained on the cultist, when I felt a sensation on my
neck. It was twitch, the sudden sensual knowledge, that something was wrong. Then, long fingers ensnared my disheveled
hair. With a sudden jolt of pain, I felt myself being pulled away from the
Professor, who seemed not to even notice, and
As a child, I had
always been afraid of group violence: The death of northern blacks in the
south, the violence in LA, etc. Not that any other violence was acceptable, but
the thought of one man (or woman) against so many was frightening. I read
stories, like The Gunslinger where a
man kills a town with two hands and two big bore guns, and I knew them fake. No
man could stand against so many. I asked my father once, when I was about 11 or
12, what he would do in such a time. He told me that no one expected you to win
a fight like that. He told me about how, when it was you against another man,
it was a matter of skill; when it was you against increased odds, it was a
matter of Will. He told me he saw a man shot 8 times by Police. He told me he
saw the man walk back into the bank, sit down, and wait for the police to
arrest him. These were moments, even for a man acquainted with such atypical events,
which separated one desperate man from another. His final thought on the subject—when
I had been in college at the time and
familiar with the famous Spartan stoics at
The skyline met my gaze. Puncturing the dismal night was the gray of small roof tops, each just a floor or two below me. I immediately thought of leaping onto them. As if to answer this thought, a large cultist step into my view. It was the second active man I had seen amongst the sleepers. It was the second one which moved with a guileful grace that I knew meant death to the unfamiliar warrior. He was a solider of sorts, I imagined, and large enough to mock any man. With one single black hand, he picked up some sickening cup and drank from it. I felt the exotic of the building slowly creeping in on my rational sensibilities. I sat up, wincing from the pain in my arms and stomach.
“You’re going no where,” he said in a voice deeper than belief.
“Did you beat me?” I asked him. He drew some sense of humor from my vengeful tone.
“And if I did?” He loomed over me, blotting the sky from my eyes.
I looked upon his massive form, feeling far too much like the mouse that roared. “I’m going to kill you,” he laughed, “so don’t act surprised when it comes your way.”
He stepped towards the bedspread and crossed his enormous arms, each one more similar to a python than I thought appropriate to think. I had to admit, the man was a titan amongst mortals. He belonged in some barbaric world free from theoretical law and home to the land of violence. I pitied my own duty to slay him, mostly for my role in the activity. I would look forward to seeing him with a .38 between us. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I thought of the other gods which stumbled my way, and how they too had fallen by the capability of my culpable hand.
“Little man, if She hadn’t told me to save you, I would have crushed your head like a nut.” He crushed the air in a closing palm the size of my head. It was no boast.
“Had you killed me, I’d have come back from the grave and slit your eyes in your head and pissed spiritual urine onto them every night,” I swore. “It’s a happy day that you saved my life. Perhaps some day I won’t be so kind!” I thought of my own position in the bed and was thankful the large man thought me invalid.
“That day may come, boy.” He smiled. Walking towards the door, he bellowed into its closed form, “He’s awake!”
A slender figure stepped through the opening door, her lithe frame wafting as if on a current. I saw the most voluptuous woman I had seen in my life. Her small frame barely stable with the ample gifts Nature had granted her. Had I not been a sophisticated man above such vulgar thoughts, I might have drooled passionately. Each step her slender foot took was another moment of heavenly movement, each breath some type of exchange between the crass air and her intoxicating chest. If this had been a miracle play, I might have called her a succubus.
“Leave,” she commanded. The tall man complied complacently. “I’m sorry I drug you though the wall. You would not have come willing?” Her question/statement blended in the very articulation of it. “Perhaps my friend hurt you too much. Should I heal you?” she extended a hand.
I caught her wrist. I thought of
twisting it painfully, but the thought died in its conceptualizing. “No, don’t
touch me.” I remembered a dark queen in an underground world; I remembered what
happen last time I did not carefully guard my senses. When I had told friends
of my previous ‘story’ and the battle with the queen, they told me I was a
misogynist for ‘making the Queen’s power only reliant on her beauty, and women
either weak or evil’. On the first part, I wondered what those friends thought
of
“What are you doing here?” She asked me interrupting my train of thought. Her hand was still clasped in my own.
I dropped her hand quickly. “Looking for a lil’ girl. Have you seen her?” She frowned. “You have seen her? Where is she?”
A brief smile crossed her face. She
walked over to an arbitrary chair and sat down. “I will tell you something of
this cult and perhaps you will see why I am willing to tell you more. Every
score of years or so, the cult finds a girl to come and maintain them. This
girl serves as their feeder and protector. She pays the bills out of their
lucrative stocks—You’d be surprised how fiscally talented these Sleepers
are—and via hidden monetary resources. In exchange for her duties, she is given
unbelievable powers, which she uses to ensure their well being. Every decade or
so, the Sleeping God devours some of them, never paying her mind, and the stock
is replenished by her charms and guile. It’s rather interesting, if you think
about it. Like a lil’ microcosmic world reliant on its own abilities to survive
outside this ‘real’ world around it.” I didn’t agree with her, but she
continued anyway. “It was your little girl that was selected for this honor.”
From the tone in her voice, it sounded almost like she was upset. It did not
occur to me until after her next sentence that she was threatened by
“Haven’t I served them well?’ you
ask yourself. I too have thought of this for from sometime. Why must I be
replaced? It’s purely ritualistic, you understand. They only do it because He says so. I’ve tried to alter the
course for sometime; yet, somehow they were able to capture that little girl
you’re after. How they did it is beyond me.” I did not supply that information,
even though I knew it was through
After some time passed and I had done some ample thinking, I came up with a strategy. “Well, I see we can help each other. You give me Liz and we’ll all go away. You can live another 20 years as this God’s wetnurse.”
She laughed and leaned in far to close to my face, “If only it was that easier, lover. I can’t just let you go, especially after all you’ve seen, He will find out, afterall”
Ignoring the clear threat and dismal position I was in, my curiosity was peaked by this He. So, you’re telling me this ‘god’ does exist?” I didn’t believe her. I was too much an atheist for my own good, I guess.
“Exist? He eats people!” she laughed, “He’s a Devourer, that’s what he does. He has long ago given up on his manipulation of people. Now, he sees them for what they are: nourishing memories. He consumes all those things which people prize, most of all their lives, and feeds on their misery. It’s quite terrifying if you’re the victim.”
“Say all this crap you’re saying is true. Why the charade? Why doesn’t he just go around eating people.”
“He’s not a glutton, lover. Besides, even God’s have their limits.” No, I wanted to tell her, no ‘god’ has a limit except for those that aren’t gods. “Besides, when he comes, it is better no one is in his path.” She lowered the edge of her dress slightly, so I saw a boiled pestilence infecting her skin. Dark purple boils wept some strange, orangish puss from her arm. It was the most repulsive thing I had ever seen in my life. “One swipe from his talon is death. It was only through his own power granted me”—a point she should have remembered later—“that I saved myself. This was a glancing blow, lover. God forbid it was a full strike.” She shivered and covered the pocked boils from sight.
“Anyway, you understand my predicament. Your friends have been making trouble for me on the lower levels. It took four of my men just to hold them on the third floor. They’re tearing this place apart looking for you and the girl.” She again leaned in as if to kiss me, I pulled away. “You’ll have to die, I’m afraid. He wakes within the hour. Let’s hope he finds her,” she dropped her voice, “before he finds us.”
III
Haddock: I understand your honors. I too felt some doubt as to the reason behind the boy’s story. But you have to understand, the wounds, no matter the medical description, upon his flesh were more than just symbolic of reality. They were the manifestation of the Godhead. Well, a god at least.
Simmons: Nonsense.
Fitzgerald: I have to concur. Gods? What god waste its time…This is nonsense! Fabrication
Haddock: There were other gods!. How can you simply write them off as avatars within rival cults? Say Mammon was not just a personification or idol for worship. Suppose God did fight and slay him, as the Tribes fought and slew the many rival cults scarifying around them! Suppose the narrator happened upon just one of many other rival gods still in existence! Either way, the story, as you will see, continues in some very unbelievable and terrifying way.
…Imagine how hopeless I felt just then. Stuck in some room with, if her word was to believed, some sorceress (again), and at the mercy of a nihilistic, sleeping cult with no other purpose but to be the food substance of an unsubstantial god that feeds on flesh. It was laughable if it wasn’t so undoubtfully threatening. Without anything really else to do, I laid back in my bed. I hadn’t noticed the bed at first, noticing instead that I had been sitting. She sat there, twittering her fingers. Several times I tried to engage her conversation but to no avail. We waited together silently.
I worried about the god. I don’t know why when every 21st sensibility told me She was doped up and part of a moronic cult. I liked it better when these ended up with punch served and idiots dead. Instead, I had been wrapped in a quilt of my own stupidity again. I sat, half expecting the goon soldier to come back in and blow my brains out.
We waited for another fifteen boring minutes when a loud gong signaled something unearthly. With a great rumble, something large shook the building. Fear awoke within our little room as She, far more so than myself, sighed wide-eyed. “It’s begun,” she said prophetically.
“I suppose that’s He.”
“A nightmare, lover. He’s ‘dread’ personified: all fangs and teeth and vile wishes. There is nothing but avarice and lust within his eyes, and he is only stated by death.” She half chanted his glories to me. Unfamiliar, it sounded more along the lines of bad fantasy…or a Langolier. Some would argue they were the one in the same.
“And we’re going to sit here?” I stood up. All those pains rushed back into my body. I had not been beaten so badly since the Underground disaster. Even that, with the broken ribs and fractured vertebrae, seemed distant, like a harsh dreams, compared to the reality of this pain. Wavering back and forth, She slipped her shoulder under my arm.
“I’ll help you down the stairs, but I’m afraid it’s only going to get us eaten. We must hide.”
“Hide? You’re going to help me find my friends, we’re going to find Liz, and burn this fucker down.” I said into her ear. Again, a violent part of my mind wanted to strike her. I knew she couldn’t be trusted, and her aid of my weaken form made me concerned even more. “You’re going to help me to my friends. When we’re there, you can do whatever you want with the monster you love so much.”
“I don’t love him,” her shrill, though quiet, response caught me off guard. “He took everything from me!”
“Oh yeah? And you couldn’t just run away?”
“You don’t know him yet. He’d come after me and then what? When he’d leveled Xuthal to punish me, where would I be?”
“Don’t give me the beaten spouse shit. Action is in the doing. If this guy treated you so bad, then why didn’t you plug him and run?” She laughed. The absurdity of her laugh made me feel childish, like my absolutism was juvenile. If I ran into this He, the sheer childish I felt then would prove fuel in our conflict. If anything, I’d prove to She how divine He was.
She read my mind. “If you do come across the Devourer, you’d best run and hope he is being lethargic.” It was my turn to laugh. What kind of Destroyer was too lazy to chase an opponent? “Yea, I’ll keep that in mind.”
She opened the door. Wherever the Guard went, it was probably into hiding somewhere. With the gong, everyone in the Hotel seemed to disappear. As we walked slowly along, we failed to see even one cultist awake and moving. Those we did see were passed out in their ‘dreams’.
She was unphased by the whole event, though it was clear her fear was still there. We talked, quietly of course, but still just barely louder than her heart beat. It was audible through the slender arm wrapped around my torso. Together, we snuck as quietly as two people could, especially with one supporting the other. Her little frame could not haul the bulk of mine, and I found myself leaning upon the muscles in my one leg to support the entirety of my weight.
She asked a decent amount of questions, mostly about me in a generalized fashion. Who I was, what I did, where I lived, etc. Though I distrusted her, I had no other options but to relate to the creature that helped me escape this unrealistic hell. She asked me about my friends. It was an unfair question. I had none, really. I had become something of a recluse, something of a dreary hermit. I had K___ of course. She alone kept me from falling in on myself. Part of me felt a solitude in myself, as if my familiar, obstinate soul was abandoned to its own self-inflicted misery. Even Nathan had fallen away, our relationship becoming the husk of past times. I saw him occasionally, this being the longest adventure we had had in years. I knew, no matter what, the only person that would notice my disappearance was K___. My heart, as it did then, would always be hers. So cliché it seems to say now, but it is reassuring given the dire state of my condition.
But, as it was occurring, She’s questions awoke some knowledge I had within myself. I knew, even as I limped down the apocalyptic hallway, that this was my last leg (excuse the pun). It wasn’t suicide or a longing for it, but a type of wisdom associated with a D-day solider. When the doors fell open, the imminence of ones Death sauntered down the hallway with all the bravado of self-acceptance. As I knew in the previous adventures that I needed to live for someone else, I knew now, perhaps in a Christ-like acceptance, that my death was the necessity. Even the greater faculty of self-preservation only wished to find this task in order to lay down my life for its completion. I had alienated my friends and family in o’ so many other missteps. I had forgotten all those horrible crimes I had committed, instead accepting the good things as my legacy. Now, in that accidental Hotel, I would find a way to make Death my last convenient, contrived task.
“Are you okay?” She asked me.
“Yeah, I’m having a blast,” I answered. “Are we close to Liz?”
“She’s around the corner.”
We hopped on in silence. I had no more reason to talk to her. She had done her part and, in the process, forced me to realize the depths of my own self-wallowing. It was despicable. Had I pen, I would have purged those awful redundant feelings from my soul. It wasn’t to be done, and the mission to rescue Liz took a back seat to my desperation to be rid of She. Her very presences made me feel like vomiting. I saw her as weak, desperate, and manipulative. I knew she was using me to get to Liz, hoping that we would never reach our destination in time. The problem, we both knew, would materialized when we finally found Liz. Whatever compassion motivated She to help me would bleed away, and the side I knew she possessed would materialize. I feared that I should have broken her neck long ago.
As we neared the final doorway in the hall, I felt a shiver exit her spine. “What is it?”
“He’s near.” The pronouns were driving me insane, just another straw on that proverbial camel’s back.
“What the hell is its name anyway?” I asked.
“Would you risk calling it here! We dare not mention—”
“Ah bullshit. What’s its name.”
The doorway opened and a small girl stepped gingerly out. “You don’t want to know its name, Jeff.”
“Your name is Jeff?” She asked.
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded, knowing the answer before it was asked. Still, I was worried this was becoming a Japanese horror flick, and she would become he…ah, you get my drift.
“Her name is Liz. She is my replacement.” She answered.
“And her name is Ashley.” I suppose, that was similar enough to Haggard’s book to complete the surrealistic experience going on around us.
“Great, now that the nominatives are established, can we get out of here.”
I knew it would come eventually. Ashley, in all the speed of a coiled serpent, threw her hand forward. I barely had enough time to throw her away from me—though with a great amount of effort and pain. Liz it seemed had planned on the attack. She threw herself frantically to the side as a great rush of energy blew the door jam to pieces. I held Ashley against the wall, both my arms straining to restrain her. When it became obvious that I could not do so any longer, I knew she would overpower me. “Run, Liz. Find your brother!”
“
“Go!” Ashley lowered her fingers towards my eyes. I saw her fingers growing, each nail becoming a razor before my eyes. “Why did you help me,” I asked as her fingers lowered. She did not answer. I could barely make out Liz in my peripheral vision. “Run!” Ashley drove the nails into my chest, each finger a slicing point of entry.
“No!” Liz screams. She did something and the wall slid open behind Ashley. With nothing to stand between us, I felt my weight begin to pitch forward. I released her from my grip. Ashley drug her nails along my upper chest and fell away into the sucking gloom behind her. A horrible scream of defiance marked her slow descent into some unknown infernal darkness. Bloody and all, I felt my body begin to follow her down.
A small force caught my belt. Liz pulled, her feet braced on the edge of the wall. Reaching behind me, I was able to pull myself away from the graviton abyss. The devouring void pulled at my weight. Between the two of us, though, we were able to force my weight away and free of its yearning.
“Thanks,” I said, breathing as Liz pulled a hidden lever. The door slammed shut.
Quietly, she slunk next to me and sat down. “Are you a friend of my brothers?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Your brother is looking for you, you know. He’s very worried.”
“He locked me in here.” She sobbed solemnly. I was unused to the tears of little girls. Its affects were, for lack of a better word, depressing. “I’ve been here for two weeks!” she cried. I pulled her in close to me, feeling awkward but useful in the process. She hugged her little arms about my bleeding frame. “Are you okay?” She asked, sobbing into my side.
“I’ll be okay,” I looked at the 10 holes cut into my chest. “It looks worse than it is,” and hurts like shit, I added to myself. “Do you know if that thing she calls a ‘god’ is real?” Her little blonde head nodded against me. “Do you know how to get out of here?” she nodded again. “Well, we’d better go then.” I wanted to stand, but she was content to sob. Given the present disaster we shared, I thought better of forcing her to leave so soon.
Together we sat on the floor of that wretched hotel. I swore, if I lived, I’d see the structure burnt to the floor. If I am to die, I thought, I’d see it burned to the ground as well. It was a good, reassuring thought to think at a time of daft, dumb punishment. It was several minutes before she stood. By that time, my legs had comfortably fallen asleep and she had to help me stand up.
She opened her mouth as if to thank me when something like a thumping began below us. We listened. It grew quicker, almost more violent, each step bringing the thump closer and closer to where we stood.
“Tell me that’s not him.” I asked, ears straining to for a halt of the thumping. Liz did not answer. She began to sob and shiver quietly. “We have to go,” I said, placing a hand on her shoulder. The thumping grew louder, an impending approach of Ashley’s nightmare. “Liz, we have to go. Do you know any other way to get the hell out of here?” I tried to keep a quiver from my voice. Instead, only a harsh sound of authority came out.
“The hole,” she pointed to the wall here I had recently thrown Ashley. Behind the dry wall, I could have sworn I still heard the shriek. “We can slide down there.”
“And it goes…” The large thumping, which had been much further below us than I imagined, grew almost unbearably loud.
“To His lair….”
“Fantastic.” I looked at her; she gazed tearfully at me. Together, we made one horrible set of headlight deer. “Perhaps it doesn’t know we’re here.”
With a flicker and a thump, the noise stopped briefly. A long, horrible sound began like sucking air. Raising a finger to Liz, I paused in thought. I thought I could go for a good beer, maybe a good pipe, preferably both in a place far from this rat-ass hotel. The sucking went on longer after I realized something was sniffing, like a bloodhound, after our trail. I imagined the worst, most man-like bloodhound I could. It was hideous.
“It knows you’re here,” came a quiet
whispers from the doorjam. With a start, I saw
“And where the Fu—” I realized Liz stood right at my side, starring all lovey eyed at his brother. Had we all not been terrified to make a noise, I’m sure she would have broken down crying again, “Where’s Nathan and the Professor?” I asked.
“Gone.”
“Dead?” I thought it impossible. Nathan? Eatin’ by a big bloodhound, impossible!
“Left. They bailed after you got
drug into that hole.” The gears inside broke. “Nathan wrote you off for dead,
and he an that,”
I had spent the better part of my
youth in misadventure with my best friend. My same best friend who had just
abandoned me. I didn’t, well, I didn’t know how I felt. I felt like Caesar, I
imagined…or
Impending divinity reminded me of my responsibilities. The thumping started in an even more terrific speed, rushing up what might have been our very staircase.
“We take our risks in the God’s pit. Pull the lever, Liz.” She rushed over to the secret lever. I stopped Brandon who sought to follower her. “When we hit the floor, you and Liz break for it. I’ll stay in the darkness…” He stopped me by pressing the .38 in my hand. “Thanks. I know we haven’t been friends for long…”
He shook his head, “I didn’t know you thought of me as a friend?” He smiled.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have any anymore. But, I want you to do me a favor. When you get out of here, you find K____ D____, and you tell her that she’s been my everything for sometime now. It won’t mean much to her until….Just tell her, for me.”
“Come on!” Liz cried.
“Okay,
I looked at the little girl I had just recently met. “Take care of your brother. Once you hit that ground, don’t you stop until you’re in the daylight.” I stooped down and opened my arms. At first, it didn’t seem like she would hug me. Then, probably more for me than her, she stepped into my arms. I wrapped them tight around her, pulled just hard enough to remind me it was a living being I hugged, and I let her go. With a smile that beamed innocent warmth, she followed her brother down.
I waited. Could the creature greet me in the light, I wondered to myself. I could make a break for it, perhaps even make it out the door with them. Part of me wanted to, the same part that drew in breath in the sunny air, and saw majesty in the wet tree leaves. Then a part of me, the part that saw honor is sacrifice, and charity in personal suffering for others, thought I did a good thing. It ignored that cynical, critical side of me that knew I was a hoax. I might, perhaps, die. I would choose the death though. I had driven away everything that makes man whole. Any life, any human idea of hedonistic heaven, depended on at least some pleasures, but some misanthropic, self-annihilating side of me drove all those pleasures right in my self-fashioned hell. I was the artifice of my own suffering through obsequies for my past honors: I adventured, I conquered, and yet I had died the first time so many thousands of miles away. When I first slew that red-haired youth in those Irish ruins, I saw my own blood spilt in the grass, a wet imprint of my misfortune. So distracted had I been with survival, that I never saw the life I chose to create. And some pompous part of me saw stars at fault. To put it simpler, the artifice of my life was built on my joy of suffering, but I could not help but see divinity in the groundwork. Yes, I had managed to take all things benevolent from myself, had seen to it that I was miserable. But now, now I would find those auspicious stars in martial suicide. Seppuku could take all things from me, but I could regain my soul in it…I could see the invisible world visible for just once. Whether it be seen by some personified absolute goodness, I could not know. Instead, I welcomed death as the destined end to all living things.
Coming to terms with my desperation,
I leapt into the gloom head first, and hoped I didn’t break my neck on the way
down. I was, to quote my own past failure in writing, “a ‘stumble head first
into the rabbit hole’ type of
I hit the ground softly, given the sloping nature of the hole. Feeling kindly the kids from Goonies, I slopped out as one might expect bile feels after a long night at the bar. Immediately, there were whispers in the darkness. Someone shrieked loudly a profanation I had not heard before. Then, unexpectantly, a soft touch breezed my neck.
“Don’t speak,” the effeminate voice articulated from the gloom. “It’s with us.”
“Where are they?”
“Gone, safe. He’ll find them soon enough, but safe for now. Shh. He’s here,” she whispered. Then the touch was gone, receding back into some safe abode. I got to feet. I would not die dumb, like willing meat upon a slab. I wanted to holler threats into the void, speak to it as if it was aggressive. But, that was until I heard it near me.
It came from my right side on the warm, moist wind of exhaled doom. Then it crawled upon the nape of my neck, found some hot spot on my spine, and buried its unseen talons into my neck. My hair stood in salute to its majesty, while my eyes sought some relief from its silhouetted kingdom. Then there was a shriek that could have been nothing else but the feminine voice… Oh god, I can still hear the volume of its terror. Then, then the sickening crunch of bone and muscle beneath immortal teeth. Shrieking and moist crushing noise filled my ears. As the only sense left to me, the very thought of hearing its consumption of what had to be Ashley made me, the survive of so many grotesque adventures, wish to tear out my senses. I knew it must be near me, given the proximity of the screams. Turning towards the sound, I backed slowly away. I faced towards death, and backed against the wall. Something tripped my feet and I fell into a liquid which, even on impact, I prayed was not blood.
Then it spoke, if you could call its voice speaking. There was a pause, it tried again in something that sounded Arabic. Then, Germanic and then French. At last, it fell to speaking a broken form of English. Its thick tongue spoke each familiar word with a dripping note, the soggy sound of insatiable death.
“Why did you stay?” It asked. I did not answer; I knew it stood just front of me. “Answer,” it commanded.
Every ounce of my froward soul demanded I did not respond, the resistant faculties of my youth pressing me not to confess my fear. Little hope in that, I knew the bestial god smelled the primordial terror in my perspiration.
It tried again, “Death?”
“I wanted to prove to God I was not afraid of him,” I whispered, my wet back pressed harder against the wall. I heard it shuffle forward.
“All wise men fear the gods,” it leaned forward. I imagined its canine teeth stretching, and the oozing saliva stretching with it. A moist voice continued, “I took you as wise, at first. Are you wise?”
“They say I am obstinate,” I whispered again, “but there’s cowardice in that too.”
“So you are a coward,” it asked.
“I’m not much for social dogma. I’m human enough.”
“I ate my first man before Horace sang upon his mother’s breast, long before you men knew how to kill each other. They hadn’t even known to flee the cold when I was pondering the stars in the sky.”
I did not know what kind of simpleton god I was confronted by, but it was obvious then that there was a hierarchy even amongst the divine. I felt bolder knowing the creature was limited in its own admission. Sliding down lower on the ground, I touch a sharpness of smooth material. Feeling the point, I decided it was a knife and vowed to stick it into the maw’s body.
“You cannot kill me with a blade,” it spoke.
“Everyone thinks they’re immortal,” I answered it back, “there’s power in dying, creature. You don’t live with the guilt that you’ve murdered so many just to live a few more minutes.” I did not know what a hero was, nor did I care. I never believed they existed in reality. At that period in time, I vowed that, even when it ate my body, I would be the only person I knew to insult a god to its face.
“Smote once and then no more.” It rose its unseen paws above my cowering head and, like that red-hair Irish man, I leapt upon him with all the pent up rage of an oppressed mortal civilization. Driving the dagger into the meat of its form, I grappled with the unseen mass, finding something that resembled large arms to struggle with, and continued to slide and stab the blade into its torso.
Together we fell onto the floor, both struggling to gain ground. The wet blade slid from my fingers and I wrapped my hands about its neck. We were tumbling downward, it digging its claws into my back and stomach and I squeezing with all my might. Something like bones broke beneath my hands. We rolled and rolled and rolled…and, in the gloom, there was no halt to our descent. Something malleable tore in my back. My arms were losing their strength. With each repeated and rhythmic flop, the creature and I switch positions in some great Hegelian rotation, each one taking power over the other as the dichotomy turned. Then, when it seemed like our battle would not end, we stopped and I felt nothingness below me. Only open void greeted me, as I struggled with the great beast to keep from falling into silence.
With great effort, the beast sought to pull itself from my grasp, probably to hurl me into Oblivion, but I struggled to pull him closer to me. There was a sensation and the definite feel of his teeth closing on my shoulder. I felt the bones of my arm lock as they cracked, and I slowly felt my strength draining. Feeling myself growing weaker, I knew there was one last moment…Then, I saw hope in the darkness. Some animal squealed as I drug it closer to me, pulling tight my arms about its humanoid torso. Locking my feet against the unseen edge of the abyss, I levered the great creature off the edge. It resisted until, at the very last moment of my energy, we jointly fell into the eternal nothingness whispering for our deaths...
Haddock: The boy closed his eyes with his final enunciation of the word “death”. He lay quiet for some seconds and opened his hand to me. Within his twisted fingers was one small scrap of paper, bloody and poorly inked. I reached forward and pulled the note from his hand.
Simmons: Well, Haddock, what was it?
Haddock: It was a poem sir.
Fitsgerald: A Poem?
Haddock: I took the poem. The flatline buzzer sounded immediately. I stood. A nurse calmly walked in and turned the monitor off. She checked her watch, wrote something on a sheet of paper, and walked away. He was dead. I…I didn’t know what to say.
McMasters: Well, what did the poem say?
Haddock: Um, I have it here typed.
Simmons: Please, Rev, would you read the poem for us?
Haddock: Here we go. It’s called, “Eternity: Narrator’s final Failure”
Within some wrecked soul’s world
Sinks unsubstantial Man ‘ever more,
Down, and forever down, drowning
In an endlessly spiraling whirlpool.
O’ artificial puddle, serene water basin,
Why, in avarice, do you drink down
Man’s only eternal form, his soul!,
When it’s the only spirituality
He has left to him to call his own!
What endless, trivial gaze seeps
Vile dreams that you be substantial?
What physical pain can you threaten
When no physical lungs can choke
Upon your condemning, filthy waters!
The whore of blind Justice tips herself
In glorious, gushing groans for you,
That her fingers slip into the scales
As you press upon her golden sides
To bugger away man’s only demise!
What is your divine wish, my lord,
That the world be skewed towards
All those things celestials wish
And that man should drink his death
If he should fine earthly happiness!
And, in his drowning seizures throe,
He should cough up his immortal soul
Upon the beaches of
Where you would await its tide
And cast his wretchedness eternal
Into the fires of whirlpools inferno!
One last word I have in my defense
Your gates are carved from recompense
And bleed from their architects wounds
For nothing but your selfish swoons,
An ego-trip for celestial triumphs
Where man falls flat by his hiccups—
Flowing filth from his mortal mouth
And finding damnation in its spout—
That you may collect your goodly souls
Only to make heaven a wretched world.
Simmons: Well, I guess that’s that.
McMasters: What’s all this mean?
Haddock: It means I saw a someone die
nights ago, and I don’t see what the meaning is in it at all. Where are
Fitsgerald: I think that is the question we must ask, Rev. Haddock. It is a question which we cannot answer now, that is for certain.
McMasters: I agree.
Haddock: …but there has to be something more.
Simmons: Rev, I think the ‘more’ is in the inference. Let us leave the testimony for now. We shall return to it with a clear perspective in a month. Until then…
Haddock: A month? Why so long?
McMasters: Urgency is not always the more logical route. Let us keep pace, Haddock, and we’ll find answer soon enough. These things need probing.
[the tape ends here. The is no further testimony, and the file was sealed a week after. We hope this information proves useful.
Staff.]