Authors: Nate Kenyon
“I don’t understand why you don’t just call him,” Pat Friedman was saying. “If somebody doesn’t show up for work, isn’t that what you do?”
“I just don’t think I should. I don’t want to bother him. Maybe he’s sick. Lots of people are coming down with colds right now. He’ll call me when he’s ready.”
“But we
pay
him to come to work. I mean, he does work for us, doesn’t he?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“An
ass?
I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware I was being an ass. I thought I was pointing out an obvious answer to the problem. People just don’t do what he did. I mean, if they want to keep their job, they show up for work when they’re supposed to. He’s only been working here for a few weeks, for Christ’s sake. I hired him because I thought it might help him get straightened out. But I am so sick of everyone walking on eggshells around that kid—”
“First of all, he’s
not
a kid, he’s eighteen years old. And if people walk on eggshells around him, maybe it’s because his father just fucking died—”
“Oh, come off it. He hasn’t seen his father in ten fucking years.”
“You know, sometimes you are the most insensitive pig—”
The doorbell rang. “Jesus…okay. I want this to end,
right now…” They moved away and Jeb couldn’t hear any more.
He stumbled away from the wall. A cold feeling gathered in the center of his body and sat there, weighing him down. All this time he had been fantasizing about Mrs. Friedman, but he’d never really thought—couldn’t imagine that they would actually talk about him. Not like that. As if he were some kind of…mental patient.
He heard more voices at the front door, muffled greetings. He could hear more cars crunching along the gravel drive. Someone was going to see him out here. He had to move.
He trudged off through the cold and the quickly hardening mud to the road, walking right up the yellow line until he reached the logging track and his car. He had come to watch Mrs. Friedman get dressed and to tear up the garden a little and get revenge for whatever slight he felt had been given him. But now he felt like an outsider, a loser—worse, the crazy kid who needed handouts and special favors. When had he ever had any friends? Could he count Dick Pritchard, the boy who called him “retard?” Or Marcy Stone, the girl who had passed him a note saying,
I like you. Do you like
me?
And then laughed out loud and said, “not!” when he came up to her, stuttering and red-faced?
Maybe he could count Mrs. Friedman. Julie. But the way she had talked about him just now, it was like she felt sorry for him. He didn’t need anyone’s charity, not for a job, and not for…whatever she thought she had been doing the other day. Would she really have done anything with him that afternoon? Or was she just trying to make him feel more comfortable, less like a freak? The more he thought about it, the more he wondered. Hell, maybe she was making fun of him like all the rest. Had a good laugh after he left. Probably told all her friends.
He got in the car and started it up, spinning the tires and spraying frozen mud up into the floorboards. The big car
slid, caught itself, squealed out onto solid tar. He leaned over and switched on the radio. There was something rolling around on the floor under his feet, and he reached down and picked it up; a bottle of whiskey with a couple of swallows left in the bottom. He twisted the top, tossed it aside and drank the fiery liquid in one long gulp.
When he got home, the house was dark. He parked in his usual spot near the front door and stumbled through the hall to the stairs, not wanting to turn on the lights. His head was spinning again, and something was at work on him, an eagerness that hadn’t been there before.
Do it
, a voice whispered, and this time it was his voice, only his, echoing through the dark chambers of his mind.
He climbed the stairs quickly, holding onto the railing for support, and now he let his thoughts drift back to his father for the first time in years, allowing himself free rein. His father who had worked for a living until the mill shut down; coming home with the stink of sulfur and wood in his hair, swinging his empty lunch pail. To Jeb he had been the largest, strongest man alive, capable of anything. And later, his father stumbling in during the early morning hours, his voice loud in the quiet house. Still the biggest man in the world, as dangerous now as a cornered animal. Telling his mother to “shut the fuck up and let him alone,” he was only out doing what men do; Jeb knew where he had been, oh yes, he’d been out at the old schoolhouse drinking that drink that lingered on his breath, that sweet-sour smell that remained on his clothes and in his car. And hadn’t Jeb wanted to be like his father when he grew up? Hadn’t he admired his father, the way Ronnie Taylor took control and didn’t let his wife “push him around” like so many other wives pushed around their husbands?
In his room he paused, pale moonlight filtering through the window. The closet door was open a crack. Had he left it like that? He couldn’t seem to remember.
Blackness inside. Jeb Taylor stood in a moment of sober clarity and looked at the closet door. As he stood there wide-eyed, the door swung outward on its own until it hit the wall with a quiet thump.
Come on inside, Jeboriah
. This time it was his father again, speaking to him, standing back in the dark.
I been
waiting for you
.
He moved to the open doorway and kneeled in the blackness. His mind was completely empty now, except for the hunger that ate at his insides like acid. He was unaware that he was grinning. The effect was like skin stretched tight over an empty skull.
Hurry boy, hurry
…
Jeb reached into the shadows, felt under the pile of clothes and drew out the suitcase. It was an ordinary case, brown pebbled cover, not real leather of course, they couldn’t have afforded that; two latches, one on either side, and a combination lock in the center with the numbers all lined up zeros. Cheap lock, easy to break, all he needed was a screwdriver.
But it wouldn’t be locked, would it? Of course not.
He unsnapped the latches, one by one, and it swung open easily, as if there was something inside pushing to get out. He stared down at the contents of the case, a lump in his throat. An old sports almanac and a couple of girly magazines from the ’70s, a picture in a cheap silver frame (of him as a boy, he saw with dull surprise), clothes underneath, a pair of faded corduroys that smelled like dust, a black leather jacket he remembered his father used to wear when he went out driving or down to Johnny’s in the evening, a heavy blue work shirt. When he pulled out the shirt he almost tossed it aside before his fingers brushed the pocket and he felt something cold and hard.
His heart thumped crazily in his chest. Something wrapped in a yellowed piece of newspaper, a round, clumsily fashioned piece of stone. Its weight was more than
seemed possible, considering the size of it. The weight was perfectly balanced, drawing it evenly down toward the floor.
He stared at it. Two serpents wrapped around each other with their tails in their mouths, fascinating yet somehow repulsive. The eyes were drawn to them, the way they circled without end, and oh, you could lose yourself in those two twisting shapes, and if you stared hard enough they almost seemed to move, to slither across the cold stone, to open their fanged and bloody mouths…
Now something else spoke up in his mind, something new, a desperate sounding voice full of fear. This voice was sober and small and urgent.
This is your last chance, it said.
If you surrender to it, there’s no turning back. It will sit for
a while and brood, and you’ll hardly notice that it’s there,
but soon you won’t be yourself anymore, no more Jeb Taylor,
not really, you might think you control it for a while but
one day it will wake up and eat you ALIVE
—
But that voice was weak. He had nothing to look forward to as Jeb Taylor. When had he ever been himself, anyway? Hadn’t he been meant for this all along, hadn’t he felt as if he were just going through life’s motions, waiting for something else? He sensed something larger just around the corner. Revenge. Control. Power.
The hole in the amulet was strung through with some kind of braided rope, cool and slick to the touch. Jeb slipped the cold heavy stone up and over his head, feeling the steady pull as it settled around his neck. He opened his shirt to let it in and when it touched his skin,
oh Jesus, Jesus God
, the stone seemed to jump and pulse like a living thing. He looked into the dark closet and saw hands raised and clenched, holding something out over fire and dripping blood, dark hooded figures swaying in the light of the dancing flames. Chanting seemed to fill the darkness and throb in rhythm with the light. The flash of a silver blade whistling down through air. A
dark man standing at the edges of the fire, arms crossed, watching.
Sudden, searing heat, and the thing wriggled against his skin. Unable to help himself, he cried out and made as if to tear it away. Then he stopped, because the amulet was cold and the room was dark and normal again.
Breathing hard, Jeb Taylor kneeled at the mouth of his open closet, his hand poised to rip the amulet off and throw it across the room. But it was nothing but cold hard stone, a little heavy, maybe, but just a piece of rock, and he was fine, he was cool, he was smooth, he was slow and in control.
Something caught his eye. He reached down to smooth the yellow newspaper from 1986 on the threadbare rug. Handwriting there, on a blank part of the page. The writing was old and faded, but he could read it clearly in the light of the window.
so you finally got here boy well it’s about fucking
time. like i said i been waiting a while. i got a lot of
plans for you boy and ain’t they good, and you can
have all you want too. just wait a little longer and I’ll
show you. ain’t we gonna have some fun
.
welcome to the party, boy. welcome to the party.
your pop ronnie
.
Jeb stood up and swayed in the gray moonlight. The amulet swung against his chest. His head was full and fuzzy again and he felt the booze deadening his limbs. Had he really cried out? It seemed that he had. He listened for a long time, straining to hear around the thump and swish of the blood in his veins, waiting to hear footsteps in the hall and Gramma Ruth’s voice. But the house was quiet as a tomb.
Something else, half-buried under the frenzied mess he had made, pulling clothes out of the suitcase. A bit of white
sticking out. He kneeled again, pawed at the jacket, shirt, uncovering whatever it was he had seen.
A pile of bones and a skull, staring back at him with empty eye sockets.
Across town, Annie Arsenault came wide-awake in the pitch black of her basement room, her heart thudding in her chest. For a moment the fiery red eyes continued to stare down at her from the depths of her dream, and then they faded away, leaving the acid taste of fear in her mouth. She knew what that dream meant.
She did something she hadn’t done in years. She got up out of bed and knelt in the darkness, ignoring the ache in her old bones and the mossy scents of her dusty jars and ancient books, and she prayed for strength to a Christian God she no longer really believed in, prayed for the soul of a town she had lived in since birth. The only home she had ever known.
Her prayers would go unanswered.
“Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me…And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.
—
Luke 22:42–44
From the diary entry of Mr. Frederick
Thomas:
April 30, 1727
It is near the end of the month of April, the spring
rains are upon us, and I am all but lost. Dear God
(dare I mention that name?), how can I record all
that has happened these past few months? And yet I
feel that I must, or risk the last vestiges of my own
sanity
…
Oh, Hennie, how I wish that I had confided in you
and sent those letters, and that you were here now as
you had planned to be. But I did not want to worry
you, and I feared you would think me insane, reading
what I had written about ghosts and corpses and dark
men coming in the dead hours of the night, and
charms (or damned things, as they should rightly be
called) coming to life and pulsing like the bloody
heart of a demon. If only I were insane! But insanity is
a mere refuge the mind takes when confronted with
things such as I have seen, I am convinced of that, and
it cannot be called up at will. How I have tried to lose
myself in these thoughts, and let myself believe that I
am in the grip of a brain-fever that has held sway ever
since I stepped off that ship almost a full year ago.
And yet in my heart I cannot believe it to be true; the
work continues around me, and every day there is a
new wonder to appreciate in town, a town office and
meeting house and the beginnings of industry, and in
all other aspects life goes on
.
It is light now, and the horrible dark dreams have
left me, and so I must try to relate what has happened
as best I can, in order to complete a record, if only for
the benefit of others after I am gone. It must be done
now, for I fear that by nightfall I will no longer be able
to resist and will be taken once and for all, as the new
month of May begins the Roman celebration of
Lemuria, the festival of the unhappy dead. It is this
which I am afraid the creatures have been waiting for
since All Hallows Eve, and my heart speeds with
dread to think of what may come of all of it
.
Where to begin? I suppose I must start by accounting
my own investigations, which began near the end
of October and ended only a few short days ago, in the
muck of that damned place below the falls. After the
series of unsettling dreams about the man who had
appeared in my chambers, and the odd reactions of
my charm to his unholy presence, I began to search
for any possible explanations that might be found, all
the while dreading the coming of night and the dreams
which accompanied it, which were becoming progressively
wilder and more vivid. I sent a man whom I
trusted to the colony in search of books on the occult,
but I was hesitant to explain myself fully to him, in
light of the recent incidents at Salem and the tendencies
of the people to condemn one another at the mere
mention of witchcraft and the black arts. Nevertheless,
I felt I must do something, and so I sent him with
enough money and a silly little story about research
and the writing of a book of my own. He returned with
more than I had hoped for, saying that he had encountered
a man (or, more properly, a man had encountered
him) the very first night in town, who had bought
him a drink, and had offered to sell any number of
books on that subject, of those that he had available to
him. This mysterious man, whom my messenger described
as having strangely hypnotic features and an
unsettling way about him, had been out walking late,
supposedly in search of good wine and conversation
.
The coincidence is more than suspicious, and the
books offered were all kinds of rare and ancient texts.
Can there be any doubt, knowing what I know now,
who this man was, and what he was (and is) after? Or
that he was a man at all? I shudder to think of it
.
In these dark books I found more than explanations;
I found my worst fears confirmed. They describe
all manner of wicked rituals and gibbering demons, as
well as the necessary articles required to call them to
life. What this cursed charm around my neck embodies
can no longer be in doubt, for it is ancient, the very
essence of all that is evil in this world! And yet, God
forgive me, I do not have the strength to take it off, for
it has a hold on me I cannot break. In the dead of night
I have heard the most seductive whispers, and promises
of what I may become and may hope to command,
and I am weak, and so very small in the face of such
things
.
And yet it is worse by the day, and I do not know
what to do about it. How am I to feel upon waking in
the midnight of my own private rooms, with this thing
wriggling against my neck and a series of unknown
and unthinkable words upon my lips? Or worse, coming
to my senses and finding myself out of my bed, dirt
caked upon my naked feet and blood on my hands,
with no idea where I have been or what I have been
doing?
Still, I continued to read the devilish books through
the long cold winter, gaining a kind of morbid fascination
and satisfaction from them, and when I encountered
a man from Salem, who had recently
passed through our village in search of work during
the first thaw, I interrogated him for hours without
thought of the consequences, consumed with the need
to know everything about those brutal trials several
decades previous, and all that surrounded them. He
did not know much, only that many men and women
had died, and that it all seemed a lot of craziness to
him. I passed my eagerness off with a general reference
to research and the writing of my own book on
the subject, but still he looked at me strangely, and I
was glad when he left town without mentioning our
conversation to anyone
.
Since that time, I have begun awakening in odd
places as I have said, after having had those terrible
dreams, with no idea how I arrived there, but only with
the most burning feeling of impatience and need. The
last and most horrible of these places I have visited
three nights in a row now; I have come to my senses
standing in the freezing cold in my undergarments, my
legs buried almost to the knees in filthy black mud,
looking out over the darkest stretch of foul water one
can imagine. It was only after considerable distress
and reflection that first night that I came to realize I
was in the midst of the boggy land below the falls. How
I had arrived there in my sleep, through the dense tangle
of brush and fallen trees, I cannot guess, but always
when I awake I am filled with a hunger that no
amount of food and drink will satisfy
.
This very moment I remain alone in my new home,
as the rains beat against the roof, and I feel the
hunger for it growing once again in my belly, urging
me to leave this place and go out into the weather to
find…what? What is calling to me down there, and
why am I unable to resist the temptation to discover
it? This I cannot hope to know, though I sense that the
very ground there is rotten. I have felt places such as
this before, though I have never given them much
thought
.
But now, I wonder. Are there truly evil places, as
there are evil people? Places that, through some obscure
coincidence of time and space, act as a kind of
unholy magnet, drawing into themselves the blackest
thoughts and deeds of mankind? I cannot hope to
know the truth, or perhaps I fear to know it; but this I
do know, that I must somehow find the strength to fight
away this demon, and I must find a way to get word to
you, my Hennie, and keep you from coming to this
place
.
If you do, the good Lord help us, if you do I do not
know but of what hell will come
.