𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑹𝑶𝑹.

From there it really only gets worse, a spiral.

“What do you think happens when we die?” I asked my nurse, as she tended to a crinkled up dry bouquet of flowers, set to replace it with the fresh one that my daughter had bought.

“Well, my parents were Catholic, but I never really bought into it much.” She gave me her optimistic little smile, brows knit in idle concern as she dropped the old flowers into the trash can with a gentleness and sympathy that could only come from someone used to throwing out the old trash, but making them feel comfortable as she did. “I guess I’d never thought about it too deeply, but Heaven always sounded too idealistic, right?”

“A place where we’ll all have mansions and gold fountains in our front lawn in the clouds.” I mused with a strained little laugh. Though we both grew quiet rather quickly, there might have been an understanding of how this little friendship of ours might end but there was a fine difference between understanding and acceptance. That was my problem now, understanding the futility in fighting but still wanting to cling onto this life I lingered in painfully.

“Maybe it’s a collective conscious sort of thing.” She said with a little shrug, the edges of her lips still curled in a polite smile, “The energy of our being still lingers on in one way or another, ghosts in the consciousness of others.” It was an earnest offering from her, some sort of comfort in these dark and dying days fleeting as they may be.

“I do like that thought.” It was a half lie, I wondered what sort of pain would befall me if I lingered on in the minds of those who’d wronged me or worse yet, of those I’d wronged. Yet, anything seemed better than the nothing my mind conjured. Cessation in totality, not unconscious slumber like so many imagined, no dreaming, no awareness, just… Gone. I offered her a small smile despite the aching feeling of dread that still whet itself on my aged mind.

“Do you need anything else before I turn in for the night, Teddy?”

“No, my dear, I believe I’ll be fine. If that changes, I can still scream, even if it’s brief.” Though we both knew I wouldn’t, my voice had already been reduced to a rasp. My throat felt like it was constantly set alight, swallowing was like dragging salt covered glass across still bleeding wounds and grinding harsh edges even deeper. Pain was no stranger, though. My hands rested on the cover of my blankets, leaning into the mass of silken pillows behind me. If everything else was agony, at least it was my bed I got to die in. I couldn’t imagine enduring all of this from one of those rigid memory foam hospital beds.

“Alright, Teddy. Do us both a favor and just text, though, alright?” Lydia teased back, striding across the room like my own personal ferryman to place coins over each closed eye and welcome me to that good long sleep. Collecting the glass of water that had been used to help me down a considerable amount of medication, she disappeared for the night.

Sleeping, much like everything else, had been nothing but pure misery. Truthfully it had been one of those key contributing factors in trying to set forth on the acceptance of the inevitable. Having been robbed of a healthy night’s sleep for the better part of a decade had worn me down. Usually I lay there in that fugue in-between state for an hour, drifted off into unconsciousness until an errant unconscious snore hit me with a fit of agony, then fall deeply once more into that trance-like half dream again.

When I awoke in a fit of terrible coughs, I almost hadn’t noticed it standing there. Lingering tall over my bedside, staring down at me. When composure had finally come back to me it occurred to me just how painful it felt to try and look upon this figure. My mind didn’t want to look at them, a radiant aura shone brightly around the fringes of its outline. Yet still I could make out the crown of eyes, innumerable as they were resplendent, staring down at me as arms stretched out gently.

“Be not afraid to look upon me.” It uttered in a cold monotone that rang out like a million bells singing in unison. An angel. A creature of heaven of divine blood. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, was it finally time?

“Are you an angel?” I asked hesitantly, surrendering immediately, dropping my head down with exhaustion against the pillow. Were it anything but an angel, I’d have no resistance to give. Yet standing there over me, it only stared curiously in the dark hollow stagnant air of my room. Its glow dimmed, I presumed it to be for my benefit as I could barely squint to make eye contact with the figure in the heavy fog of my tired gaze.

“Taste this, for it is my body. You will have answers, and your pain will be no more.”

A myriad of thoughts pressed through my addled mind, wondering if this was some form of waking dream or hallucination. It wouldn’t have been unheard of that the cancer had spread so much further in the short time since chemotherapy had ended. Maybe my imagination was running wild and it was simply Lydia coming to tend to me in the middle of the night as she’d heard my cries of anguish and hellacious coughing.

The figure, however, remained. No amount of blinking or silent staring erased it from my view, but its words did well in lingering in my mind in those half seconds while I processed its presence first. Long slender digits, far too long to be human, held between the index and thumb a small little wafer-like substance. Offered to me in cooperation with its words, I put the two together. My gaze passed from the creature to the offering, considering its words and the ramifications. Were I younger and free of agony that befell me now I might have been more inquisitive, but as I am pain rips through me constantly and sleep has long been nothing but fantasy. If this were some malevolent force it couldn’t bring me any pain I hadn’t already felt, if it was offering me relief it was more than any other I had in life now.

My hands are frail especially as I lay there bereft of any sleep, and the way it offered to me now I could only think of communion. I open my mouth to accept and the creature places its blessing onto my tongue. The texture is firm, like a wafer as I’d been expecting, yet silken. It was soft enough that swallowing it whole was not a painful experience.

“Drink. This is my blood.” It offers again, long thin finger raises to cut across the opposite palm which closed into a fist over my welcoming head. “You will sleep, and awaken anew.” To me this was a dream, a half stumbled imagination of my dying mind as I tried so hard to hold onto whatever consciousness I had left. My jaw opens again, tongue hanging loose over my dried lips to aid in catching that thick black ichor as it spilled from the clenched hand. It tasted as divine as the being looked, viscous like honey and thrice as sweet. It is the last thing I remember of the night as I slipped away.

I slept through the rest of the night without even a wink of interruption. My sleep had been so thoroughly overtaking that I woke from Lydia gently stirring me, shaking me by the shoulder to assure that I hadn’t passed in the night.

“There you are– Must have been some dream, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you sleep so soundly.” There was a little huff as she leaned back upright again, knuckles resting at her hips. “Saw you were breathing, just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

“Oh…” I was dazed, groggy from being awoken, but warm after having a night so uncharacteristically restful. The sun shone brightly into my eyes from the window, and I looked around as if the surroundings had changed. While the night had been so delightful, I didn’t recall dreaming. Save for the looming presence of that angel of good fortune. “Yes I’m alright. I actually slept for once, can you believe it?” I asked with a heavy drip of amusement in my voice, reaching my hand up to run it across my bare bald scalp.

“You? Hardly. I don’t think we’ve had a night yet where you got more than a couple of hours.” To defy the nitty gritty details, she began to tend to me as was needed with my bedridden state, cleaning and washing as was our routine.

“Believe me when I say that I am painfully aware. But last night was different.” There was relief in my tone, I hardly even noticed that through all of the talk of sleep I wasn’t actively in pain. Some idle movements still triggered a wince, mostly of my chest and abdomen which had been normal, but all those tired aches and pains had gone.

“Must have been a good dream?” We both paid no mind to the sloshing sounds of the sudsy bucket, focusing on the good as our routine proceeded.

“I dreamed of an angel.” Humming softly, I leaned my head back, moving as directed while she did her best to bathe my withering form. “Must have been here to give me at least one good sleep before I go.” Not even a hint of melancholy about it in my voice, I’d forgotten what it had been like to sleep.

“Guess he worked some extra magic on you too. Looks like you’ve got some hair starting to grow back.” I looked down to see and to my shock it was true. Before and during chemo I’d taken care to shave what wouldn’t fall off so I didn’t take on that sad patchwork pattern of hair on my head, the rest went when I decided to lose it on my own terms. Now, they were small, and some had ingrown–Presumably from being so deeply inset–but little hairs had begun to sprout along my legs. Even more on my chest, the reddened roots of the ingrown ones stood brightly against my pale chest and must have been the source of some of that new dull pain. Yet it was child’s play the amount it gave me compared to the amount of relief I felt. No longer feeling weak had felt like such a small victory in these, my dying days. Yet I was not offered many, so a victory it was.

We talked more about how good I was feeling as the day went on and things smoothed back into normal routine. Both acknowledging that this hadn’t been some death defying miracle, I still very much was at the end of my life. Just a respite on the road to the end, a quaint little truck stop with delightful snacks before I went about the rest of my journey.

Night came again, and my mood had been burning with a sense of calm that hadn’t taken me in what felt like decades. Yet, when I was on my own again I couldn’t help myself but scratch at the gnawing itch, now that the will to do so had been renewed. Scratching at the growing hair at my torso and letting out a desperate sigh of relief. I thought about trying to pop the ingrown hairs to get free of some of that last little barrage of pain that still twinged at me while I simply laid there. Alas, they were far too tender. Even as my fingers moved to pinch at one it burned, like a hot iron ball dropped at the spot on my skin.

I wondered how such an agitating thing could have been more painful in trying to be rid of it than cancer had been simply existing. After a few tries I gave up, no longer able to bear it. Almost in spite of that, though, sleep came rather quickly. It had been equally as tranquil as the night before. Only awakening to the stir of my nurse again.

It was far less calm than the morning before though.

She shook me, eyes in a panic as she started braying out her concern without care for whether I’d adjusted to the morning light yet.

“--Did this to yourself when I went to bed?!” Was about the first measure of sense that lingered in my mind as I still took my time in calmly rousing consciousness.

“Lydia, dear, please don’t shout. I’ve only just started having pleasant sleep.” While I yawned and opened my eyes with a calm and collected candor, the look of abject horror on her face was unmistakable. Looking at her you’d have thought I’d grown a second head, of course when I caught the sight I was concerned as well.

Those hairs that had bothered me so before sleep, the ones that I had tried to pop free from their prison of my skin, must have been torturing me more in my sleep. Bright purple, almost black, holes had bore their way into my skin. If I had to guess, in the night since I slept so soundly, the pain didn’t bother me and I kept pressing at the annoyances no matter what. It was certainly what it looked like, skin burst free outward, not in messy amounts just enough that it was clear what had happened.

Ever the professional, Lydia cleaned me up again, but this time disinfecting and taking care of the fresh pocked wounds I’d gathered in my sleep. Every so often she warned,

“This might sting.” In her gentle tone, but I felt it might concern her more if I told her I didn’t feel it at all. The poor thing had clearly been distressed by the whole thing, but my assurance that it had been an accident in the night eventually got through to her. Doing her a favor, in spite of her protests, I sent her home for the night. Telling her I’d call her if I changed my mind, I reminded her that she could come back at any time if she got worried.

Really, I’d only thought about going to sleep again.

When I tried, closing my eyes for perhaps half an hour, a peculiar feeling kept it from me. The itch at my chest had returned, spreading to my stomach now too. Giving in to temptation now that I was alone, I scratched like mad, pawing at the bandages on my chest and my exposed stomach. Trying to find some relief now that the pain had gone away.

I recoiled. Nearly vomiting outright as I felt it brush against my fingers. Shifting beneath my skin, those little hairs wriggled against my nails as I tried to itch. Worse still I could feel the oozing beneath the bandaging that had been used to cover the mess I’d made of my chest. Looking down I saw as my skin moved subtly, gentle movement that wouldn’t have been noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. So easily could it have been mistaken for the tension of muscle.

Ripping at the coverings on my chest, I pulled them off, tossing them haphazardly to the floor. The skin that had been cleaned only hours ago was irritated again. The edges that had once taken on that deep purple hue now looked like they’d been ripped and rotted as amber fluid leaked from me. The skin was blackened, burnt looking at the edges as the first sign of life sprung out of my body. About the size of a quarter, the little thing pushed and moved around my skin as if it were its own webbing. Crawling free from beneath my ribcage, it pulled away from me, and darted off down my body to disappear into my room.

It must have been my mind again, no longer given the pleasant respite of a doting angel, I was tormented with this image of abject hell. Another sprung forth, and then another. Each one pushing themselves about and free through the growing holes at the skin of my chest. The cancer must have spread to my brain, given the image set before me I should have been in absolute agony.

While it would have been a nice way to cope for a short moment, it was killed as my body began to give in again. I clutched at my side, a boil had begun to form. A bed sore that was perhaps the size around as a can of soda, but rather at the center was instead an unfamiliar black. Oozing, shifting, moving, it hurt so badly. Trying to paw at it again had offered me nothing but stinging misery. Now though, with one so large, I could see why. Each time I moved my hand towards the wound, two protruding fangs pressed out of my skin. They would be imperceptible at the size of the first ones, but this one…. Crying out in both pain and horror, I struggled and slipped free from my bed and fell to the floor.

I heard the sound of a horrid crack, accompanied by a nauseating squelch, and the pain only persisted, but did not grow. With haggard fingers I crawled toward my bedside table, trying to get to my phone. Yet, before I could reach up to do so I could feel one as big as the last start to press all eight of her legs out of my back right over my shoulder blade and scurry away down my back.

For a moment I could do nothing but lay there and weep while I felt them move inside me. Once again I tried to reach, with my other arm as the agony of my shoulder was too much, but beside the table standing in front of the wall was that radiant figure again. Watching me with that moving crown of eyes. Tears pricked the edges of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, I wanted to shout but the pain of merely living was starting to come back. Like I had only been numbed from it rather than it having been taken from me.

“Be not afraid.” It said with that gentle tone.

Yet it’s all I can feel as more of that writhing beneath my skin spreads, deeper and by the millions. It’s inside me, they’re all inside me. I feel another burst free on my back, but worse yet I can feel long slender legs like those fingers that offered me respite clawing up my throat.

I worry what will become of me, what happens when you die? I think about what Lydia said about the collective consciousness. 

As my eyes cast off into the gazeless infinity, the only light the cold bitter mocking spark of the sun and the stars so many millions and billions of miles so much farther away, I realize how truly small we are. 

Truthfully, I had considered closing my eyes and accepting the embrace of the quiet eternity, with nothing but the sound of my air recycler, to keep me company. But the finality of our existence is so often not as it is in the movies. Our story does not end because the cameras have gone away and the audience is no longer watching. I am an explorer of the stars, and it would be an insult to all I have built to not watch the cosmos around me as that very vastness causes my end. 

I consider it luck that the implosion of the space station did not send me spiraling. Left with thoughts of only nausea, as the weeks it would take me to expire would be spent spiraling on an endless roller-coaster of miserable force. Instead, sent careening back at a wading pace, away from the station that had been my home for one year, six-months, and twenty-three days, and the great big blue marble that had been my home for the forty years prior. Time, out here, had no meaning. It was all relative, after all. 

In how we had arbitrarily measured time based on our little marble’s positioning, I wager that had been days ago. Only an estimate, something fairly difficult to do with no frame of reference. When you were so literally floating in the void. My only reliable reference was how the resulting explosion that caused the shockwave that forced me through the frictionless void, and the planet I had called home, were little more than a speck at the edge of my vision. Nearly as far away as just about anything else I could feasibly comprehend. 

To behold the grave and incubator for all of human life and history in a moment, seeing all that was and all that ever would be for the vast majority of human kind caused a lump in my throat that still persisted. The hammering thrum of my heart bashing against any sense of relaxation I should have garnered from finally and fully exploring the stars unrestrained by the confines of the technology that had made it so convenient and safe. 

It was hours of the typical panicked thoughts. 

My wife, my children. Wondering if they would look up to the sky at any moment and think of me. They’d be told I died in the accident immediately, not knowing that I was the reason there were no casualties. A brave sacrifice to save my fellow crewmembers, selfless and heroic. Never knowing that it was out of fear, a panic response that any one of them would have done if not burdened by the oh so final nature of the collapsing station. Never knowing that I was condemned to this lonely hell, not given the mercy of an immediate death.  

Come to think of it... 

They wouldn’t know either, would they? 

That was the thought that would kill any resurgence of hope that they’d send any sort of rescue my way, that I could ever be considered as a thought of anything other than the dead man I surely was. 

While I was training my father used to call me Space Cowboy, and what I wouldn’t give to have a lasso right now. 

A myriad of things could have realistically been the first thing that killed me, starvation, loss of power, a stray rock drifting in space—Couldn't help but wonder which one would do it. 

The more time passed, the more that time drifted along the more strained my comprehension of it all had begun. Time. Space. Seconds could have been hours, could have been days. It didn’t matter too much with my suit still alive, keeping me hydrated while that atomic battery still also kept recycling my oxygen, my waste, and keeping me alive in turn. 

When darkness does come, it’s unclear whether it’s because I closed my eyes, or if I had just gone farther than light had ever come, depriving me of even the ghost of light that could have been. 

But I guess it doesn’t matter when there was only nothing, I’d cry if it mattered. None of it, nothing ever mattered, not while the darkness swallows me. It makes me wonder if I’m the one who dies, or if they all died. Who is telling the story? 

Of course, even though he knew, that as ever it was his parents placing money underneath his pillow, he was curious to know when they might do it. Whether they made some funny play of it... Childlike fantasy ran more wild with the reality of the situation than the beautiful fantasy conjured of a pixie sized thing, coming to the room so late at night doused with glittering dust to give specifically American currency despite traveling all the world. Reality was so much more interesting than the stories. So he made sure to make a show of it one fine Saturday, no school to worry about, about how he'd lost his last tooth. In secret he made playing in his room an excuse for a nap or two beforehand, and spent the rest of the night filling himself with the most sugary caffeinated soda he could find.

All for this moment! So he could see on the last night the sort of fun his parents had perpetuating this old myth. When the sun set, he laid under his covers facing away from the door for a good percent of the night to simply sell the fact he was sleeping soundly. Appropriately, when all was hush in the house he finally slipped to lay upon his back to better see the event. Blanket pulled up over his mouth, eyes closed just enough to appear sealed tight, while he could still see the faintest blurry images through the slits.

Reality is never much what we suspect.

The footsteps are... Heavier than that of his mother or father. But he remains still, until the shape lingers more into view. For a moment, it's excitement he trembles with, giggling silently to himself as any child does when they think that they're about to pull a fast one over on their parents. Hissing of the creature turns them quickly to quivering fear in its place, especially on the realization that whatever had come had done so from the closet, not the door to his hall.

It drags one foot along the ground, the harsh sound like stone on wood, while the other hits the ground with such feral ferocity that it seemed almost angry. Donny clutched at his blanket for safety, remaining comforted underneath its warmth. Looking at it, the shape looked remarkably human on the surface, as if it had been once. Now though, it was twisted into some uneven grotesque form. Perhaps a quarter of an ancient wrinkled human face remained visible, while the rest was consumed with forcefully implanted teeth of varying state and color. Mouth was fully invisible beneath the array of calcium, as was its left eye, the one that was visible an almost blind milky white, but all else was spread with teeth placed almost haphazardly with no true rhyme or reason. The rest of the body a gory mess of equally uneven patches full of outwardly pointing bicuspids and molars, the face is where the incisors exclusively lay.

Never will he forget looking up at this bestial thing of grotesque inhuman form as it lifted its hand, skin overgrown upon teeth that had long ago implanted to let them sit beneath the surface like hardened pustules. It clearly could not see, but it knew where he was, where his head was-- Surely. That was how it reached beneath his pillow, gifted him with the promised funds before rasping with its ghastly wheeze, and turning away from him. He lay their frozen as it drags itself along the floor back to the closet. Unblinking from the pitch dark of midnight, until the crowing of the luminescent sun pours through his window to signal morning.

Only then does he hear his parents knock on his door before entering. Yet he remains unmoving, gaze now fixated upon the closet door in an unending fear.

After that night he had trouble sleeping away from the couch. But as he grew into his middle ages, it became commonplace—Or rather, acceptable—To have a television in the bedroom as well. Something about that had made his life so much simpler. It became routine, and at about 8 pm every night he’d slink away to lay down for the night so that he may watch whatever late night host entertained him most that night and fall asleep before they even got to the second guest. Such was the way he slept and woke for years, always out before sign-off. A lonely life he’d lead, but he was happy enough. 

One peculiar night he found himself awoken at about two hours passed midnight to the singing of a crowd’s raucous cheer. So excitedly welcoming onto the stage a late night host he’d never seen before. Happily walking onto a set he’d equally never been privy to. Looking at his alarm clock, he’s rather vexed to see the time. Curious about the station airing so late... 

“Welcome back folks.” The charismatic man starts, his smile so boldly stretched practically ear to ear. Standing calmly center screen his suit is finely pressed, not a wrinkle or crease in a spot there shouldn’t be, he begins his monologue without a second’s hesitation. “The President was in town today—” Pause for reaction, but what should have been an adoring crowd is silent like the dead. Though the ever-charismatic host, in his handsome smile, lifts his hands still, as if to quiet their jeers and boos even though there were none to be heard. “--Hey, I know. I didn’t vote for him either. But he was in town this week to celebrate the bicentennial of our fine nation. Of the ceremony, the president and the fine men in his cabinet stressed the opportunity for renewal and rebirth for our country.” He reacts, again, as though there are a barrage of boos, the smile never once fading from his face. “Now, I say, that’s exactly the sort of thing I expected to hear from the man who pardoned Nixon.” Inaudible crowd clearly cheered with laughter. 

Now, Archie had never much been one to pay attention to whatever drivel he put on to go to sleep to, but he felt himself captivated. Wondering, idly, who could have possibly been the president this man was speaking of to have pardoned a president who had only just taken office a mere two years ago. Let alone celebrate an event perhaps a little under four years away. Sleep had vanished from his eyes, and he found the screen somewhat burned into his gaze, unable to blink let alone tear his vision away. 

“Oh, it’s gonna be another magical show, kids.” The host clapped his hands together, addressing the audience so informally, looking every which way about the camera except to stare dead into it. “I’ve got a great one tonight for you and the viewers at home. So, stay tuned, for musical guest tonight I’ve got ‘The Abyssal Horns’, movie star Anita Silver, and famed author--” The signal cut for a moment, glitching when the host tried to speak the name of whoever his guest was, in its place a horrendous shock to the ear of ungodly static before the host is back on screen. “And a very special secret surprise guest tonight. Stay tuned—I'm Hartly Baker, and everyone, you know I’m always-”  

And the audience, once silent, sings out in tandem when the title graphic comes to the screen. Monotone in their delivery. Grand applause. ‘Speaking from the Hart.’ He’d never heard of this show, but he found himself a captive audience member, despite its mundanity. Eyes were fixed upon the screen, expecting a commercial or two, there were breaks for them. But the screen merely faded to black and opened back up with the host suddenly at his desk. This must have been an old taping. Maybe they were testing a new reel system or something. Archie was never much for learning how the breadth of it worked as he was reaping the benefits of the product. This program was clearly some measure of political fiction, right? 

“Tonight, as always, I strive to bring you the most cutting and up to date entertainment I can. Our industry is ever changing, always in motion. Once there was a time when you could sit down with the children and watch some wholesome program, but now? We have sinned, our eyes beholding things that were only once nightmares. Exposed to this cycle and barrage of violence. Misery. Sex. Death. All at the click of a button. Gluttonously consuming with no question for our sanity—So I welcome our first guest, Anita Silver!” He holds out his hand to the far-off edge of the screen, camera shifting along the stage to capture the vision of a woman, dressed to the nines and back, the audience reacting in kind as if this were a show like any other. She saunters happily across the stage to sit so calmly in the chair beside the host’s desk. 

“Welcome to the show, Anita. It’s so good to have you back--” 

“It’s great to be back, Hart. I’m such a big fan, the only shows of yours I miss are the ones I’m on.” Cue awed reaction from the crowd, a slow crawling zoom in on Anita’s face as she shyly smiles at the host and his once again bubbly personality. Archie’s mind races from here to there, pulling the protection of his covers up to his chin. Staring down across the length of his bed, he remains transfixed. 

“Well, that’s just sweet of you, Anita.” The host says with a chuckle, gently reaching out to place a comforting hand atop hers. “How do you feel about contributing to the damnation of our society with the brainless swill you shove down the gullets of these disgusting little piggies?” 

She proceeds to answer a question, not the one he asked. No, it seemed as though this Anita Silver were participating in a wholely different show than the one that he had been observing. Her answer finished; the camera zooms in upon her meticulously painted face. As the very heartfelt question she had been supposed to answer had clearly drawn some emotion from her and the audience. Anita fights back tears, but the host remains smiling. A hollow gesture, by the appearance. Something done because it looked like it was supposed to be, rather than conveying any true emotion. 

“And what of the children? They watch you galivant on screen like some cheap slut, partaking in the flesh of so many. What is that to say of our society’s current destination? Do you feel it lessens our cultural relevance whilst those who come after us merely replace us with the next flavorless slop to drain away into their trough?” Again, she answers another question. One far and away different than the ones asked. Morbid curiosity had run its course, and Archie shuts the TV off. Whatever the program had been? He didn’t wish to partake in it any longer. 

Laying back on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, he struggled to find comfort in a place he had once found whole worlds of it. Though the program did not instill any sense of fear within him, it did press upon his mind an eerie discomfort. Something uncanny upon trying to recall the host and his array of curiosities. The longer spent laying there, focusing on the very subject, the further away it all seemed to be. The face of the man but a blur, save that cheery grin, the shape of the set nothing more than a blur of every late night show he had ever seen.  

Feeling the pounding in his heart tear away in his chest, he feels the night consume him. Though he did not remember ever falling asleep, he finds himself waking. Much later than usual, at that. His head splits like a log beneath the force of an ax, thoughts splattered about his mind like blasted as pellets from a shotgun. Contemplating calling work to tell them he is ill, he pushes through and gets on with his day. 

Thoughts linger throughout the day on the mysterious show that plagued his night. Initially writing them off as nothing more than a bad dream, the clarity of the memory of being so wide awake seems more than palpable enough to assuage any hesitation. Almost, has it come to the point where he can only even remember being awake and uncomfortable, let alone details of harsh specifics afforded by this thing that had kept him awake. Remembering the name of the host, the show, and nothing more. Coming upon lunch he fields the question to some of his colleagues but turns up nothing from their responses. Only curious questions about what sort of things were talked about, and whether he was anything like Carson, what time to catch the show. The usual sort of senseless mundanity you would get when a friend asked you about a show they watched last night. 

When accordingly, it was of little comfort. 

What it had meant to him was either something odd was at foot here or that he was steadily losing his mind. As much as he would love to give this over to something supernatural, the staunchly atheist man in him knows to put more stock in the decline of his mental fortitude. Coming apart at the seams, that’s what it felt like. Like he was a picture being painted on a once-immaculate canvas, now fraying off the frame that had held it in place. Of course, in a rational way, as well, this felt like an overreaction. It was a dream, yes? Nothing more than a fleeting flight of his errant mind cooking images up during REM sleep.  

No channels ran that late. 

That had been the response of a couple of people he spoke to. They needed to change the tubes out at the stations to prevent daytime interruptions or some other such operational issues. Archie must admit, he was only vaguely listening. More fixated upon the implications to be had for his own mental health then, if it weren’t some fluke of the system. 

That night, he could only sit idly poking his fork at the ill-cooked TV Dinner, freshly plucked from the microwave. Getting caressed after a long day at work by the background noise of his favorite show. Which had now failed to draw his attention. Not whilst he tried and failed to remember more details of the show he had prematurely shut off in favor of a literally unmemorable night of sleep. 

 He lays down for bed again, he stares vacantly at the black glass screen staring back at him. Archie swallowed thickly, feeling his brow moisten with the fresh pinpricks of sweat. The hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stand harshly on end. Though he could not place the why, he still laid his head across his pillow, and pulled his blanket over his head. Like a toddler protecting themself from the monster in the closet. It’s not surefire protection from anything, but it’s nostalgic comfort for a night that’s so painfully quiet save for the wild drumbeat of his panicking heart. 

It happens again, unsure of the moment it had happened, or how long he had laid there, only that he must have fallen asleep. When he is awoken amid the night again, it is significantly darker than it had been when he pulled his covers over his head. The click and buzz of the CRT springing to life was enough all on its own to cause him to shoot up in his bed. The static crackling of falling snow on the screen was something he took as an ill omen. It was in this moment he’d found himself doing something that he never particularly was inclined to do before now and pray to whatever god may have been listening, damning any spirit that may have been haunting him. 

As if it were being tuned to the right signal, images shift and swirl on screen, dragged down and then up again, all across the screen in uneven patterns, before once again stood at the center of his screen is Hartly Baker. Stood there with his hands clasped behind his back again, smile stretched wide across the whole of his face carving a near perfect curve from ear to ear. 

“Welcome back folks.” His intonation was the same. Every syllable, every sound, as vivid as it had been the night before. And the swell of memories flooded themselves back to his mind of the details of the show that had been robbed of him. “The President was in town today--” Pausing for reaction once more, staring expectantly down the lens this time. Archie couldn’t help but feel as though the man were piercing his eyes down to the very depths of his soul. Miserably poisoning his mind with all sorts of anxiety and terror for no reason other than sheer amusement. “--Hey, I know. I didn’t vote for him either. But he was in town this week to question why you tuned out so early last night.” Archie had zoned out for but a moment, concentrating on that unearthly gaze. That had snapped him back to attention. Ears as ready and waiting as his panicked eyes. 

“Now, I say, that’s exactly the sort of thing I expected to hear from the man who pardoned Nixon.” The host laughed, a hollow sound as ever. But the miserable connection was fragile. Breaking. The sound cracked and fizzled at the edges of his ears. The laughter became corrupt and far more haunting. 

“Oh, it’s gonna be another magical show, kids.” The host clasped his hands together, uneasy gaze pierced down the lens again. Archie could feel a vein in his brain throb with anguish whenever he tried to match or level his gaze with the man on the television. 

“I’ve got a great one tonight for you and the viewers at home. So, stay tuned, for musical guest tonight I’ve got ‘Mindless Flavorless Drivel’, movie star adulterous whore, and tonight the gate opens, the pathway lit.” Archie couldn’t have shot to his feet with any quicker a pace. Running over to wall so that he may yank, with an almost superhuman swiftness, the cable from the wall. The abyssal black screen overtaking the TV once again, the only sound in the air was the unsteady breath of the fearful man.  

He finds himself a child, once again. Stumbling through the expanse of his room and sliding open his closet door. Diving to hide among the hanging pants and sweats that cascade overhead like foliage of some great forest. He feels burdened by the familiar sounds of his childhood. Archie’s palms find themselves pressed tight over his ears, muting the imaginary sound of his father battering the closet door. Demanding he come out and face whatever punishment was coming his way for whatever perceived sleight had hit his drunken mind the moments before. 

It’s uncanny how the trauma can have him feel almost transported to that time. Still, after all these years, he can feel the reverberations of the open palm pounding on the door vibrate in his skull. The muffled sound of anguishing fear leaves him now, as a full-grown adult with his father long since passed on. How quickly it all comes swimming back to poison the well, when he finds his one place of pure comfort corrupted by the unfiltered nature of fear as it swirls about in his mind.  

And then? 

Morning. 

The rays of sunlight piercing through the slats of his closet door like beacons through the darkness. A lighthouse on the bay of the stormy night that had tormented his maddened brain. Throat dry, though at some point he had surely slept he had never felt more tired. Eyes sunken and worn, it feels as if he’d been flattened on the highway more than anything else. In his rationalization of things, it explained more than ever what had been happening. Fever. It was all it had ever been, the cresting of a miserable sickness breaking over the hill to weigh itself upon his ever-active imagination. A swell of relief bursts like a bubble in the back of his mind, a soft exhale of comforted safety breathed itself free from his throat-- 

He’d never called out from work before, but in all honesty, Archie had felt like he could barely stand let alone attend the meeting that was on the agenda. For a little extra piece of mind, he wheels the nearly 80-pound TV out of his room for the day. In some world or way hoping that it would provide even further peace from these miserable visions that had burdened him and his waking consciousness. 

With little ceremony he lays back down in bed, hoping to come upon some form of rest. Maybe when he awoke, he would feel better. Closing his eyes, he lets himself be cradled to some place far away from here. The passive world of dreams swallowing him whole and carrying him off to some land of fantasy.  

At least, until he was awoken by the sound of heavy feet clodding up his stairs. Another familiar sound. Boots pounding upon the surface of carpeted floor, soon accompanied by a furious hand twisting with great futility against a door that had been habitually locked. Once more in the mindset of his thirty years younger self, Archie drags his blanket up to cover his mouth. The warmth of his breath pouring from his nose reflecting fearfully back into his face as he stares with wide eyes at the door. Knowing what comes next. Arhythmic pounding, bashing with a furled fist against the fragile wooden structure of his bedroom door. Symphonically resonating with the miserable song of incomprehensible rambling that may as well have been gibberish.  

“Go away!” He calls out to the voice, knowing better than to do so but feeling himself steeled from years of passivity, he no longer feels the need to lie down and be someone else’s outlet. Reality had long been an array of moments where he found himself to be someone else’s punching bag, the side bit to whomever felt like they deserved far more to be headlining the story than he did. Control. God, control had felt so far from his grasp at any given moment that even as an adult he was haunted by this sound. These memories flowing through his veins and tainting every night’s sleep he’d ever had. 

Palms press flat to his ears again, sitting up and shouting once more without fear of repercussions. “Leave me alone! I just want to sleep!” As he grew older, the escape from reality that had been his solitary comfort in this life had grown into a strange addiction. Needing it and the watchful eye of the glass screens glow to even lull him to some gentle slumber. Even now, though, upon his cold moment of self-realization, he is still haunted. Burdened by the pound of fists on his door, his own fingers furling into meaty cudgels of their own against the sides of his skull. Pounding at flesh and bone to make the banging at cheap particle wood stop. Tears prickle at his eyes, and he fights to stay in bed. 

Through it, he remembers his father’s funeral. O’ the last time he’d spoken to his estranged family. How they all shared such pleasant lies about a man they had all secretly despised. Deifying a devil in the flesh with every goddamned word like it was all truth. A monster. A boogeyman. Not the sort that hid in the closet or under the bed, the sort a young boy ran to the closet or hid under the bed to escape from. Not sure when it happened, he finds himself stumbling to his feet. Head pounding in rhythm with the drunken bashing at his door. 

Swinging the door open, Archie intended to find his father, hoping to confront the tormentor of every single night of sleep. The not so peaceful death of every single moment of rest he’d ever have in his life. There is nothing. Just the stairs that lead to the abyssal darkness of the rest of the home below. Silence. No sound, no closure. No control. Just, nothing. 

It’s a hollow feeling, walking back to his bed and burying himself beneath the mountains of comforters. But now his sleep finds itself uninterrupted. By the damnable touch of any sort of painful memory or imaginary nightmare. Unaided, it’s the first night of sleep he’s had in... Ever. Before this moment, his mind had never known a peaceful night without the touch of a TV’s glow, or medical enhancement of some form. It’s refreshing to wake from. To lay flat upon the surface of his bed, staring at the speckled ceiling feeling a calming serenity from having taken back a piece of himself in some fashion. 

At least for one night, there was control. A feeling that swelled within him long enough to take the TV from his room. A pleasant night of sleep was a boon of much confidence, to him. Further still were the succeeding nights, and the amount of comfort the sleep had afforded him. 

A week. That was how long this euphoria had lasted him. A safe bastion from the displeasure of the mundane that seemed to suffocate and drowned him beneath the whispering darkness that seemed to swell and bury him beneath its cresting waves and peaks. One week. One week until he is reminded of how little control he truly has, again, by the bitter touch of his life. One particularly nasty verbal lashing from his editor had been all it took for him to fall right back into the suffering of helplessness. Coping with his lack of power with escapism into the glowing box in front of his couch. 

The gentle call of the trumpet is what startles him to wake from his slouch on his sofa. Followed swiftly by the heavy pounding of drums, and a saxophone, lulling the adoring audience from their wild cheering so the handsome host could stand at the center of the stage again. 

He could almost recite it lyrically; it had been burned into his mind. 

“Welcome back folks.” Memorized the playful splay of the hands, the welcoming stance of open arms that soon close once more. Letting the crowd’s cheer die down to nothing. “The President was in town today—” A pause for reaction, one that drags on for far too long this time. As the host hauntingly stares down the lens. Piercing gaze burning a hole into the depths of every worry, ruining any comfort with but a look. “--Hey, I know. I didn’t vote for him either. But he was in town this week to discuss how much of a fat lazy piece of shit you are. Simpering about at your job, letting everyone walk all over you.” Archie isn’t sure if it’s real, or his own mind kicking him for being proud that-- “You stand up to the ghost of one memory and you feel invincible. One more road black hits you in life, and you rebound so quickly. You want it all just handed to you, don’t you?”  

Clicking the button on the remote, he clenches his jaw tight. His eyes sinking to the floor in front of him. Whether this was his own mind playing tricks on him, burying him in uncertainty and doubt, or some bullshit paranormal thing, he doesn’t quite care. Not when whatever it was made some, admittedly, valid points. 

Archie quit his job the next day. No one was ever sure why. The opportunity never even raised itself for anyone to ask before he’d done so and practically danced his way out of the office. His coworkers did not the smile that had spread itself across his face, ever present and wide. 

Two weeks.  

Still no job, no call backs from any of the prospective places he’d given his resume. Even through his desperate pestering of some of these places. Inundating answering machine after answering machine with phone calls asking about the status of his application. On one such occasion, even downright pleading for the job. So little time and his resolution crumbles again, withering like a castle of dust in the wind. Finding comfort and control in the escapism of the dim glow of the CRT. Though he had freed himself of it as a sleep aid, though he had stopped watching it so obsessively, it still helped him cope to these feelings of powerlessness. 

When he wakes this time, he notices the feeling of his Argyle couch has somewhat changed. Less coarse and harsh and more of a welcoming plush feeling beneath his tired body.  

“Welcome back folks.” 

His eyes shoot open, his body stiffly rigid when he rises to his feet at the familiar voice. 

“Easy there, killer. I’m getting to it.” Those piercing eyes are directly on him now, craning so the host can look over his shoulder at Archie himself. The audience laughs, but as he gazed beyond the assaulting lights of the studio to the bleachers beyond all he can see are an array of stiffly positioned bodies. Faces frozen in some darkly contorted expression somewhere between amusement and despair. Feeling the sweat beginning to bead as he lowers himself to sit calmly in the further guest chair, he clutches at the arms. Fingers furling roughly to grasp a white-knuckle hold onto them. Hoping such force would drag him free from this nightmare. 

“The President was in town today—” The pause for reaction was maddening from the other side. An eternity of the pair of them staring off into that crowd of gaunt grey corpses, as they make sounds without movement. “--Hey, I know. I didn’t vote for him either. But he was in town this week to celebrate the bicentennial of our fine nation. Of the ceremony, the president and the fine men in his cabinet stressed the opportunity for renewal and rebirth for our country.” The boos are there, but the audience just stares forward with their dead eyes. Sunken and swimming in sockets filled with puddles of dried blood. “Now, I say, that’s exactly the sort of thing I expected to hear from the man who pardoned Nixon.” When the audience finally stirs, it’s to physically clap alongside their raucous cheers. The bloodied stems where their hands might have once been clacking bare exposed bone together, this routine having been done sufficiently enough to wear down the extremities to nothing more than a passing memory. 

“Now folks. I’ve got a magical show for you tonight.” This was different. This wasn’t like when he was out there. “But, I’ve been host of this wonderful program for twenty years.” Pause for cheers, calm them down with the gentle raise of his hands. “I’ve been host for twenty years, but I think it’s time I hang up my microphone and retire. Put someone else in control...” The audience lets their sadness be known, even if their bodies merely sat there continuing to do nothing more than rot in their seats. 

“I’ve got a great one tonight for you and the viewers at home. So, stay tuned, for musical guest tonight I’ve got ‘The Calling Darkness’, movie star Anita Silver, and a very special secret surprise guest tonight. Stay tuned—I'm Hartly Baker, and everyone, you know I’m always-” 

On this side? The audience says nothing, there is no graphic or cheer as there is in the mysterious broadcast, just silence as the host stands ever still while time passes as though there was. Archie doesn’t even blink and Hartly vanishes from the stage, to appear behind the desk at his right, proceeding as if this were all according to plan. 

“Tonight, as always, I strive to bring you the most cutting and up to date entertainment I can. Our industry is ever changing, always in motion. At the forefront of this ever-shifting medium is a star, a good friend, and most certainly a fan of mine, Anita Silver!” Cue cards in hand, he motions offstage as the lights focus their beams on the curtains that part so ever slowly. A decrepit, worn down, thoroughly ancient skeletal corpse falls face first through the sapphire shade, head bursting open with all manner of nightcrawlers as the host once more rises to his feet. Miming a loving greeting to the host. Looking at the empty chair beside Archie as though it had been occupied. 

After the dead silence where canned cheers would normally be, Hartly beams his charming smile to the empty seat. 

“Welcome to the show, Anita. It’s so good to have you back--” 

Silence, of course, there was no guest to speak. 

“Well, that’s sweet of you to say, I’m glad you could take a break from your busy life to be on my farewell show.” With a gentle clack, the host straightens his cards out on the surface of his desk. Feigning a misty-eyed reaction, averting his gaze for dramatic effect. “Anita, you’ve been an icon of our generation. The industry has certainly wrung you dry and spat you out. But through it all, you endured. All to make your mark on our world, and I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say I’m going to miss you, my dear.” Passively, Archie shifts in his chair, pulling his body away from the empty chair to almost hide in the corner of its seat. 

“Anita Silver, everyone.” Light shines once more on the desiccated corpse strewn about just barely on this side of the curtain. The clacking cacophony of bone on bone returning as the gaunt shapes once more mime a parade of applause for the guest. 

“Folks. You’ve been a wonderful audience, and I have with me tonight a very very special guest I’ve been trying to get onto the show for months.” Vacant gaze fixates on him. The suddenly dead eyes of the host staring emotionlessly through Archie, the ghostly foggy eyes of all the adoring eyes of that corpse-like audience accompanying it. 

“I have here Archie Walker. Now for those who don’t know, Archie is a pathetic little wretch. No love, no life, no job.” Opening his mouth to speak, Archie finds no sound leaving his mouth, not before the host begins again. “But I think I’ve got what he craves more than anything. Something that I craved too once upon a time.” What could have been construed as a solemn look passes over the features of the host as he settles back casually in his chair. 

“As you all well know, this is my last show. Archie here? He’s my replacement. I hope you treat him with as much kindness and respect as you’ve given me over the years.” 

Shooting to his feet, Archie finds fire in his belly finally. Enough to kick to his feet and stand threatening over the desk of the host. To grab his tie and pull him taught to the edge. “Now listen here, you don’t get to talk to me that way! I may not be as important as you or your guests, but I matter. I’m not pathetic. And I’m not defined by what anyone else thinks of me. You’re gonna take me home, and I’m not gonna host your little show.” 

“Why not?” Is all the host asks, no fear or anger in his own gaze as he stares up at the angered protagonist. A snide mocking grin baring itself across his features almost instinctually. 

“Because my life--” 

“Is going nowhere. No job, no control, no power. No confidence. Look where you are, Archie. Look around.” Archie tried to resist the command, but he does. Looking at the set, the lights, the stage. Almost with stares in his eyes. Hypnotized by the grandiosity of it all rather than being buried by his own fear. 

“My life might not mean much, but it’s mine—So I get to decide what happens to it. Not you. Got it?” 

“Yeah, Arch. I get it.” He holds his hands up in surrender, his features not shifting even an inch as he keeps his gaze leveled. “So, I guess you wanna go home?” 

Tanner had, since he was but a young man, struggled with the ability to fall asleep. A child of the 80s, he’d had a TV in his room since he was a toddler. Engrossed in every program his eyes swallowed, he couldn’t even get to sleep without the gentle hum of the thing humming him to sleep. Adulthood had been unkind, when he’d lost his job, he found himself forced to move back in with his parents, old habits died so terribly hard. But one night, while coaxed to sleep by his childhood TV, he suddenly found himself woken by the sound of some sort of late night program. 

“Welcome back folks.” The charismatic man starts, his smile so boldly stretched practically ear to ear. Standing calmly center screen his suit is finely pressed, not a wrinkle or crease in a spot there shouldn’t be, he begins his monologue without a second’s hesitation. “The President was in town today—” Pause for reaction, but what should have been an adoring crowd is silent like the dead. Though the ever-charismatic host, in his handsome smile, lifts his hands still, as if to quiet their jeers and boos even though there were none to be heard. “--Hey, I know. I didn’t vote for him either. But he was in town this week and apparently while he was walking back to his limo, someone tried to shoot him.” An array of gasps overtook the crowd, but the host maintained his grin. “Honestly, I’m shocked he missed. It’s not like Reagan’s winning the Olympics anytime soon.” The crowd bursts into laughter. 

“Oh, it’s gonna be another magical show, kids. I’ve got a great one tonight for you and the viewers at home. So, stay tuned, for musical guest tonight I’ve got ‘Darkness That Calls, movie star Terry Watts, and more for you.” Tanner found himself engrossed immediately, watching with great interest as the host practically danced across the screen with energy while he spoke-- 

“I’m your host, Archie Walker, and I hope you’re ready for--” 

The graphic bursts onto the screen, the audience singing alongside it. 

Venturing not much further from the story at hand, I settled myself in for my night ahead repairing and restoring texts to their former glory. As the stranger had paid quite handsomely an advance, I was told to prioritize his book. To put it mildly the book was quite the horrible sight. Shredded to all manner of hells, it appeared far older than any other bound book I had the pleasure of setting my eyes upon. 

The pages were an ill colored tan, and positively ancient. They held a texture more akin to that of leather, but still held their blistering dark ink without even a glimmer of fading from their surface. Curiosity set the better of my mind as I turned through the pages. Examining with gluttonous interest every facet of the grand stories within. They were all manner of fantastic and yet now as I record my own story I cannot remember the specific details of what I beheld. But I do recall having difficulty deciding whether or not this were a personal recollection of past years of life, a generational tome recording family histories, or a work of utter fiction. 

The stories were positively unhinged, talks of covenants with old gods, and magic that could not possibly be real. Tales of risen dead and wild lands of otherworldly unlife. There were passages and mysteries abound in this so old a tome, so curious was my inquisitive mind that I could not help but scan them so intently with my voracious gaze. I did not feel it related to my pain until but the last hour. I, beguiled by the mystic unknown this book conjured, I dared read half passages aloud, one such one I did not garner to fully grace my tongue until the piercing headache shattered my focus. 

So intense has the pain become that I feel I am unable to truly see clearly or focus on any sort of task more than a few moments until it becomes too unbearable. Somehow, I had managed to complete the restoration of the odd binding, but never was I permitted to see the customer in question except for a brief moment when I spotted him through the shapes viewport from my workspace. Almost did I bring myself to rush to meet him. My mind was a flutter with questions as it was that agonizing white hot spear of pain that pierced its way from one end of skull to the next. But the odd nature of his appearance did give me pause. I could not describe his appearance beyond odd. Dark flowing cloaks and leathers, black as pitch and shielding him from the elements. Some sort of odd beaked trappings covering his face. 

I had stood there for only a second witnessing his presence, when in a flash, as suddenly as he had appeared-- he was gone. His exit punctuated with the loud raucous bell above our door, and the accompanying slam that could not be helped by our weather worn entrance. I had barely been able to set myself aside from the miserable pain long enough to look up from my projects, let alone pursue with all of my anxious questions in mind. Over the course of the evening that miserable feeling had only begun to escalate as well, by time of the strangers return for his property it had gone from hot metal piercing the soft flesh of my temple, to the dull throbbing ache of some horrible things wriggling themselves about in my poor miserable brain. 

It is difficult a feeling to put to words, it is almost impossible to describe in a way that the average man could quite understand. Like all host of slithering creatures, like worms, burrowing around the synapses of my mind like the muddied earth they swam through on a daily basis. The rest of the night was a blur, moving from one point of existence to the next as if swathed in some ephemeral trance. The memories of which were entirely transient an existence, as temporary and fleeting as one might expect while pain is so readily the focus. I remember visiting the church on the way home, in hopes that Father Erickson may have some sage words of advice, or something medicinal he would be willing to impart to deal with this new affliction of mine. 

Whatever advice I received offered no respite, only frustration, I remember that much. Whatever medicinal herbs I was given have long been used en masse in an attempt and hope that if I overloaded myself with their potency, it would push out this miserable pain. Yet, by some stretch it felt the opposite was true. 

By the breaking of the morning sun, I had slept so little—Time passed in a blink, but I remembered nothing—Could think of so little else but the miserable pain that only developed. When the light had cursed my eyes, every grey lobe of my brain felt like it had some sentience of its own. Wriggling, writhing, demanding escape from the confines of my skull’s prison it had been trapped in. Truly by now my sympathies would be with my neighbors were it not my suffering that inspired those anguished screams of agonizing existence. 

As I could muster little strength for any else but clenching my skull in bed, and retching with pain, I had missed what should have been the start of my workday. My employer promptly showed his way to my door and let himself in when he’d heard my screaming. I was accosted with all manner of questions. None of which I remember, nor do I recall if I’d even properly responded to them. What I do recall is him dragging me with great indignance to the hospital. With all hopes that some help from someone other than those ascribed by the church would be any more helpful. 

I sat waiting patiently for hours while it felt like my entire skull was unraveling at baser levels. That if I were to look in the mirror I would have been, through some strange alchemical process, reduced to the various scientific ingredients that compose the human body. The sweat of my brow had become so profuse, I had lived in silent fear those moments that I may drown. When finally, the doctor saw me, my relief was far from immediate. He examined me for what felt like hours. So long had he stared into every orifice of my miserable head that I feared he would simply produce his fleams and decide to perform a bloodletting. 

To my great fortune I am blessed that no such torture befell me in that way, in continued suffering’s place, I am given medicine and a word of advice. I am told to take them every hour or so, and to return in a few days to see if I am feeling any better. While my employer tells me that we will pause our current restoration commissions until I am in a more suitable state. Upon first taking the drug, I already wrote it off as another banal attempt at tricking my psyche. Placebo to make, what is surely in the minds of a doctor, my mental condition assuage and for me to return to normal. Though, I must admit, upon the second day of taking it, things did begin to improve. 

Though, I am entirely uncertain as to whether it is the medicines doing, time slowly aiding in my recovery, or the unfortunate truth of me becoming used to the agony.  

With great displeasure on that second night, when my defenses were lowered by renewed faith in the scientific method, I was plagued by nightmares. All manner of unspeakable horrors wandering through what is the usual monotony of my average night’s rest. Familiar landscapes are twisted and strung along at unsavory angles that make so little sense to the eye. It is an odd and harrowing vision that plagued me, every entrance to every home upon the cobbled streets of my neighborhood seem to open at once. White ethereal light cascades from within, not the holy light of the divine or holy as we know it—Something far from it. It is less the comforting of creation and more the accursed opposite, entropy given form as chaotic light to touch my mind in such unsavory a way. To promise salvation and in its place only give perdition. 

From the doors, all unevenly rowed along the length of the street that wound and curled upon itself into infinity beyond what my eye could perceive, came writhing horrific masses of flesh that I can only scantly describe. They are a work of horror, the sort my paranoid mind could only imagine as the beings writhing about in my rattled skull caressing and manipulating the lobes of my addled brain to their whims content. They move on their long foreboding tendrils, each horrific limb made of some terrible conglomerate of sentient worms folding mass in on itself as they crawled from the light of entropy. As they encircle me in their infinite colonies my only solace and reprieve is the morning call of the sun’s brilliant rays shining into my eyes to signal it is time I awoke. 

My only proper sleep in the couple of days since my journey of misery began, and it is cursed by the confounding image of these creatures. 

But I am free. Not from my misery but from the visions of horror and nightmares that had assailed my already fragile sanity. When I awaken relief for my mental state is palpable but worse yet my body feels sluggish. Every movement is labored, the simple act of lifting my thin sickly arm is like trudging through the full pressure of the ocean’s depths. Along the course of the night, perhaps I had done little actual resting—Rather fighting tooth and nail with every fiber of my mental being. 

I am but a prisoner in this slug’s vessel of a body. Merely sitting up feels as though it has taken me hours of daylight, and that is before I have even thrown the covers from my body. Of little surprise is how I quickly give the fight up, letting myself collapse back against the comforting cotton sheets. Staring with sunken miserable eyes up to the ceiling of my bedroom. Further there is no movement from me the rest of the day. I let myself succumb to the want to be unconscious. My mind was still a throb with nothing but horrible pain, my body wanting nothing more than to shut itself down. 

Sleep, I had feared, even through these visions of aberrant torment, was my only escape from the waking life that caused me more suffering than that which could be given by the throws of my imagination. My only solace through these new days of fighting my body through gelatinous waste was that when I slumbered, no matter how darkly the void may touch my mind, I would be at rest. 

The more I gave in, the less combative my dreams became. At least in ways I could scantly remember. So too do the headaches leave the less I fight. Taking that as a sign, I give in fully to the want of my brain, for my body to just rest. Surely, I thought, if my body wanted nothing more than to be at rest and continuing this agonizing fight to stay active had done nothing more than exacerbate my condition, then perhaps this was the best course of action. 

Sending word with the last mustered strength of my body to my employer, I let him know that I needed a full week’s sabbatical. Not bothering to wait for the letter in response, I adjourned back to bed. Knowing my misery would once more be as at rest as my mind. But as my weary mind drifted off there was not even a single vision of horrible creature or twisted landscape. Simply... Nothing. 

It would be incorrect to say I envisioned myself drifting through the empty blackness of the void, for that would be giving myself a sense of self in this nothing. There was simply no thought, no memory. I was at rest, and then I was not. No stirring, no moving. Though I could feel myself withering, though the hunger had begun to consume me when I woke again, I could not bring myself to leave the bed. All I’d had energy enough for was to sail adrift to my ardent slumber once again, only to once more be greeted by the absent entropy that had consumed me the night previous. 

This final morning when I found myself awake, the final disconnect had yet to have fully occurred to me. I stared absently at the ceiling for moments too long to be considered normal before it had occurred to me that I had not blinked for the duration of my hour set there beneath the welcoming warmth of my homely sheets. Trying to force such an action led to just as troubling a realization. 

We come to now. 

I have spent to this point, my entire week’s time of rest in this bed. Four of them had been of proper rest, but the last meandering three have been as a prisoner locked in my flesh. Without fail the sluggish pace of my body has elevated into a full blown rigor mortis. I am cold, stiff. More still I have lost full agency of my waking body. Attempts to bend the tips of my fingers have resulted in little to no movement. Not even a twitch mustered in salvation for me to crawl from this bed. But the passage of time has become the more grueling aspect. After the second day I had hoped if I merely tried to will myself to sleep I would either awaken or finally be consumed by the relief of death. 

Not even Morpheus can pull me away from this living nightmare, just as readily as Thanatos cannot bring me to any sort of afterlife. My soul is so terribly locked away in my ever rotting corpse. My only senses to be active are my eyes perceiving the world around me, my ears to hear the horse drawn carriages clacking their hooves and iron clad wheels across the cobbled street, and the increasingly acrid stench of my body consuming itself slowly. 

As the days progressed, and I remain there forced to stare lifelessly at the ceiling above, I can practically hear my own flesh start to slough itself in rotting chunks from my body. The stench was as horrendous as the sight of me must have been. It took merely a few more days of this Hell before I had fully lost track of time in totality. What must have been an eternity of suffering there stagnant in my body’s own filth eventually came to an end so to speak when my dearest friend came to check on me finally. After what had been far longer than the week’s sabbatical I had assured. 

His disbelief was heart wrenching, the guttural sounds of his sobs of anguish were all the more vile when I could not tear myself from this prison to comfort him. To assure him I was alive! So desperately I wanted to jump from myself to give him the sort of escape from his pain, as he had clearly desired. Yet in spite of what the mind had wanted, I felt entirely disconnected. All I could truly muster the strength to do was bring the memories of that horrendous scripture back to the forefront of my mind. Symbols and glyphs I haven’t even the words to describe. Ancient tongues and stories long forgotten by the world no longer touched by the void. 

Was this what happened when all things died, or was this because of that terrible book? 

Oh, how I wish that the mortician would have done me the service of closing my eyes as he treated my corpse. More haunting than the sounds of my brother in life’s cries of overwhelming grief was the sound of my own body being poked and prodded like some terrible thing of experimentation and intrigue, robbed of all autonomy. Through it all I could do nothing, not even move my eyes as I was at the mercy of this man and his instruments. Drained of all my fluids and prepared for the casket. I had expected a funeral, but none came.  

Just the box.  

Dark as it was. 

So much harder to count the hours of suffering when there was not even the touch of the sun’s light to give you any sort of experience of time. All I can relate to myself is that I was there longer than a day, and perhaps shorter than a century before I felt the clawing of hardened steel against dirt above me. Which too, seemed to drag on for an eternity. 

I am not entirely sure what I had expected of such a liberator of corpses as the one who tore open the wooden box, but I had hardly expected the odd lanky creature that had greeted me. An odd sort of innocence took his voice, but it was betrayed by his thin skeletal frame, and the beaked mask of doctors of old that adorned his face. In spite of his garish appearance, he spoke in polite well-mannered English. The sort of brogue of a man living in The Vosges speaking English as fluently as a native. As surprising as that was, what was more of an oddity how he had no care for my body’s stability. Doing little more than cutting my skull from my neck and lifting my head. 

But... Wait... 

This was him! 

This was the odd owner of the book. Though I had never met with him directly I recognized him from the vague description of his appearance given to me by my employer. Three or four full heads taller than the average man, thin as a rail—As if he could slip through the gaps in a door, and odd out of time attire that seemed no less as genuine as his money. 

This man, who now held my decapitated head betwixt his fingers, was the one who had come to rebind that infernal book. Had this been his goal all along? To take me as some sort of distasteful trophy of conquest over the flesh he had so thoroughly blasphemed? 

“Oh fear not dearest, Theodore—Todd I shall thusly name you—Free are you now of the prison of life’s embrace!” If, truly, I had been his intended target then why did he refer to me by a name other than my own? “Fear not, dear fellow! Worry no longer! For I am ever the friend to your begrudged sort, the kind that have been betrayed by life. Nermal Fitzroy, do well to remember the name, as we are to be friends now until the sun shines no longer.” 

A jester, almost, as he danced among the dirt. Giddy to have taken my head for himself. With the gentlest tap of what appeared to be a cane against my rotting nose I could feel some sort of life fill itself into my desecrated skull. 

“Are you ready for an adventure, my boy?” 

No! I wanted to shout! Begone from my final resting place you damnable devil! But instead, what came from my withered jaw was nothing more than a wild scream. 

His dearest friend had joined him on this lofty goal, to become a servant of the church and bringer of God’s message. Though, rather than out of the goodness within his soul, or love for the divine, Father Prescott feared that what had really taken his friend was fear. Fear of the unknown. Of not belonging. Envy and fear overtook him, and Father Prescott hadn’t the courage to say it aloud. Rather, he watched him leave for fear of forgetting himself in this secluded town of so few. While he stayed here, to look after his friend’s mother in her final years, and with great thought and care, aid this place that meant so much to him. Thoughts rush from his friend to the last year of this poor forgotten town of Widow’s Glen. With the death of their eldest members, the family had chosen to move down here to the home they had inherited. They had all met the man before, but never his wife. They were welcomed with open arms as they came for the funeral. More so when they revealed their decision to stay. 

This community was a tight knit one. It was hard to not know your neighbor’s life story. Cable and phones didn’t quite work out this way. All you had were books, video tapes, or the stories that hung from the not so sober lips of your drinking buddies. 

When oddities started occurring, then, it proved all too obvious. 

Chatter and gossip were rampant for a day or two. Hugh, the husband of the newly introduced couple, had begun to act strange. In a way no one could properly identify at first. As he looked upon the only world he had ever known, the rising sun in this mountain town—He considered how he’d been asked to help. What could he do to help? He was but a preacher of God’s word, not a doctor or police officer. It wore weary on his mind, but the local sheriff was too far gone to contact, and their local doctor had looked at him, and in all physical ways he seemed fine.  

It started with an unusual occurrence; a very public scene made on main street with his wife. Prattling on about some odd stone he’d brought with them, how it had ‘become the answer’ to all of their woes. 

There had been a strange unexplainable daze in his eyes, Father Prescott noticed. A glaze that does not inhabit the sight of a man with full grasp upon his sane and rational level of oneself. It was like watching the sanity of a man’s mind unravel like a ball of yawn down the stairs in real time. Terrence Jarvis, the diner’s line cook, had been the one first to come to him about the incident. He had borne witness to its opening moments and had thusly been the only one among the built-up crowd to have seen the event from start to finish. He asked if there was anything that the priest or the church could do to aid the man—But Father Prescott had no answer. More citizens, more men and women, parishioners of his church, and otherwise, came to him, fearful of what may happen if the problem was left to the devices of rotting mind. 

It had become rather dire. A few more loud and raucous arguments had led to even more public concern. Confrontation led to nowhere, and it seemed that the man they’d all known had begun to be rotted away. A crazed look in his eyes, the sort an addict got while on the hunt for their next fix. But eventually, it became even more apparent that something needed to be done. Culminating in the desperate Christian community becoming nearly a mob at Sunday’s service. He did not remember who suggested it, but in the vast symphony of his congregation's pleas for help, the word sprouted to be almost spontaneously.  

Exorcism. 

Father Prescott had never done anything like that before. He was certain, without any shadow of a doubt, that the whole of his church hadn’t done any sort of exorcism in nearly two-hundred years. Trying in desperate measure to deny their request, it wasn’t until Hugh’s wife came to him with the same word that... he felt the pull in his heart. Having to relent was not something he wished to do, but if he could offer even a moment’s relief in this desperate time to his congregation, then in his mind there seemed to be no other choice. 

On the morning of Saturday, December 29th, 1984, Father Prescott arrived at the home of Hugh and Marjory Stewart, armed with his bible, a prayer to the angel Michael, the rosary he held tight between the grasp of his furled fingers and his well-worn personal bible. Standing on the path to the couple’s home, he stands on the pavement of their walkway, quivering in his shoes, muttering some quiet prayers. Irrationality had run rampant within his mind, he knew, but something caused his hair to stand on end. An inexplainable fear that gripped his mind like a vice, squeezing it for all the terror it had to behold. It is by the will of God that he was able to drive himself forward even a single step. 

A cold sweat formed at his brow before he was welcomed into their home by the fearful wife. It was a scene out of a movie, in the mind of the priest. It was not but a moment after he arrived home, following the event, that he purged himself. Expelling the contents of his stomach into the bowl of his toilet and staring for moments far too long in consideration and memory. Without hesitation he wrote about the experience in his private journal, to document what he had seen and done. As he felt the memories of it being driven madly from his consciousness already, he felt it prudent to document the experience before it was gone forever. 

I stand on the precipice of a new discovery. I have seen the horrors of Hell have begun to work their demonic hatred upon the unfortunate lost souls in my congregation. I have seen a woman in deep fear tie her husband to the posts of their wedding bed for fear of his lashing out against her or himself. I have watched her husband scream profanity and soulless hatred at all in the room whilst he writhes and pulls at his restraints until his wrists and ankles were bloody. As I called upon the protection of God and the archangel Michael and begged of them to rid this righteous soul of evil, and deliver unto him salvation, I heard the inhuman tongues of Hell spew from his mouth. His bones cracked; his body twisted in impossible ways; limbs stretched unnaturally. It was not the eyes of a man that stared into my soul that night. It was the eyes of the devil himself. Pure evil has sprouted and come to my humble town. With the righteous power of God, I brought them peace... After his unholy tantrum I watched this maddened creature of possession lay back as color slowly flushed back to his greying flesh. I have seen evil this night, and I will expel it from my town. 

The priest gave in to cardinal vices that night. Staring off to the changing colors of the sunset while he smoked the first cigarette in over thirty years of clean living. He did not remember going to sleep that night, only remembered the darkness taking him, and light returning gradually, while his eyes stared off into the vacant entropy of reality. The day went unremembered, the night even more so. All he had to recollect was the knowledge that he’d gone there with intent to do what he had, and the memories recorded in his own journal. Words that for the nearly entire day following he stared at until each individual letter no longer made sense in any sort of cognizant way. 

Sister Maxwell led services the next morning. Something he’d seen had shaken him, something he could not quite bring his mind to want to remember. Some sort of image that he seemed to have forgotten even by the time he documented it less than a few hours later. But it spawned a paranoia in him, an eye always cast over his shoulder for fear of something lingering in the corners that one could not perceive. 

Hugh and Marjory approached him after a few days of silence. Thanking him for the effort of his actions. With tears in their eyes, they expressed their grand relief for how he had purged madness from Hugh’s mind and saved them from this infernal living perdition he had nearly been damned to. 

“Take it. Please take it away from us.”  

They pleaded with him. Something he didn’t quite understand, until in a harsh desperation they forced a stone into his hand. A crooked unearthly shape of blood toned clear amber. They told him their tale of misery, the life they’d led in their previous lives before they’d come to Widow’s Glen. In Arizona, where they’d lived before coming here, Marjory had inherited a property of her parents. This stone had been found while they were renovating for the sale when they were desperate enough for money. Looking into it, it used to be a biker bar, and they’d assumed maybe it was just a piece of a beer bottle. 

His mind was still... Elsewhere. Fractured, and damaged by the brief sights of whatever had been perceived that night. Father Prescott offers little in the way of commentary, just staring with sunken tired eyes at the pair while they come apart emotionally. The rest of their story fell on deaf ears, but still as if on autopilot as a prisoner in his own body, he offers them comfort. Takes this odd shape upon himself. They disappeared that night. Taking all their belongings and fleeing the memory of this place and the pain it had caused them, seemingly. 

In the light of this breaking of dusk, as he sits on his porch basking in the budding light of the sunrise still, he rolls the crag of a shape betwixt his aged fingers. Letting the light of God’s divine sunlight shine through it. Wondering, silently, he thought how innocuous and unassuming this trapezoidal oddity seemed for being at the center of all this suffering. Watching its unusual amber glow spark with speckles of beautiful glittering starlight throughout. A crimson hued representation of the night’s sky, blistering proudly in his palm, encased in the most vibrant of gemstones. At least, now it seemed such in his hand. Before when it had been in the possession of others, it had seemed dull, a near colorless opaque brown. A dirty old fragment of broken glass. Something about it had changed. Like it was the brilliance of divinity channeling itself into a single point, to reassure him in the gentlest tone. Reading to him scripture that he himself had consumed countless times. 

Job 33:7 – “No fear of me need terrify you; my pressure will not be heavy on you.” 

Be not afraid, it whispered to him in the recesses of his mind. It sang so beautifully in his mind the more he gazed into the depths of its near infinite span, contained within the limitations of the so finite space. In response to this corrupt feeling of desperate whispers into his ear, he locked it away. Letting the darkness take it, he tossed it into the depths of a drawer in his desk. Ensuring it would stay closed with a padlock, treating this as the most blasphemous contraband, he told no one else about its presence. There was no need to involve others in whatever this had been. 

Lapses had begun to form in his memories. It was all monumentally uneven on when they had truly started. In some measure of acknowledgement, they had in truth started when he had parsed his gaze upon so strange and unearthly a shape. A fact, of which, he had denied, such an object was little more than an aberration. A sinful glimpse into the mind of the devil and nothing more. He held no qualms or misery locking it away for seeming eternity. The purest of absolute evil in concentrated form, and if he could bring himself to even think about destroying it, he knows he would have. But it had a lingering sway. Such as creating spaces in his mind that refused to connect. Like how he got here once more. 

Cigarette in hand once again, and gaze cast off I to the infinite span of nothingness that was the forest of trees around his home. It’s a cold feeling, around him wound the tight furled grip of Satan’s evil, he could feel it. The incomprehensible vile fallen angel twisting his thoughts, filling him with envious desire he had not fallen prey to before. Thoughts of furthering himself and his place in the church following the purging of the Devil from his humble town. These thoughts were not him, it is through the guidance of the divine that he was able to tell implicitly that something was making a toy out of his thoughts and running rampant of his soul. 

He finds himself in confessional not long after the incident transpired. Confessing how he’d driven the demon out of that man, and, he feared, right into himself. As things should have been, the confession would have remained silent, to die and be forgiven when his penance was given and performed. But silent, it did not remain. Uttered in whispers behind his back by the twisted gossip of the young nun so eager to prove herself to the higher powers of the church’s hierarchy, and not the higher powers of their highest order. 

God was his shepherd through this insurmountable darkness. Though the more he treaded water, the more he felt as though he were drowning. And there was nary a hand ready and willing to pull his suffering self to be free from this anguish he felt. Torture he had to endure. For the sake of his church and little lambs. The hours of being locked on the phone with the cardinal, and a friend he had once considered his closest. It was pure admonishing. Miserable wretched criticism for doing what he believed was necessary in saving this poor miserable family from the grips of the devil himself. Was it not one of the labors of Christ to exorcise the evils of demonic legionnaires into the body of swine, and cast them back to perdition? He would never dare to compare himself in reality to the son of God, but to have them look down upon him felt so sincerely insulting. How far had his friend fallen? To be so blinded by fear that he would become a sickening voice of poison in such a holy place. 

To think they would have him apologize for doing what he was meant to. For protecting his flock... 

These vengeful thoughts were not him, neither was this feeling of bitterness whilst he sat upon his porch. Listening to the chirping sounds of crickets on the wind. But here he was, beyond himself. Feeling a prisoner of his own sanity. Father Prescott should be mortified by the depths of this madness that had confounded his mind had begun to lose track of his sensible thought. But every time he tries to grip onto horror, he instead finds anger and frustration where it wasn’t before. A darkness overtook him, and when he had taken the brief second to acknowledge it, once more did darkness wither him. Taking his consciousness into the night, he found himself at his desk. Morning long since broken and torn away.  In his hand held the stone, unconsciously rolling it over his worn fingers, and thinking only of how he could help his flock. This thing whispered to him, told him deceitful things—But a path to Hell it surely was. One that could lure the demons, who tormented them all so fiercely, back to where they belonged. 

No. 

It’s cast back to the drawer and slammed away with a thunderous shut. 

Blisteringly does he soak himself wet with the vile thoughts of improper hatred. It’s a hateful bitterness that did not have place in the mind of someone who prided themself upon doing nothing but helping those who found themselves in need of it. Tears wet his cheeks enough to stain his miserable thoughts. Despair drowns, and his lungs feel so full of water... Against the cool surface of his oak desk he presses his forehead. Weeping in misery at this grave loss of himself. The very idea of such vile thoughts overtaking his mind—  

What was worse was the lingering ears, the ones of these weathered walls that he knew listened in crevices he used to once hide as a child. Traitorous in such a self-serving way, reporting on all his self-conscious doubts and silent misery to the earthly authorities he answered to. While he buries himself in the misery of the would be, the could be, the is... All in an instant, life seems to fall apart before him. Losing grasp upon sanity is losing grasp upon the life he’d worked so hard to build. In another moment life blinks itself into darkness. 

When eyes regain open to the light of reality, his furled fingers feel so worn and tired. The expense of great effort exhausting them—At his feet lie the first sin of Cain. A crime so great that it was one that could not be forgiven even by God himself. 

Sister Maxwell lay strangled and blue in the face, no gasping, no struggle, no fight to behold. Only horror on her eyes and his own as the realization of his unholy action finally began to set in. 

“No…” he uttered in a frantic dance to nothing. “No, this isn’t right… I didn’t do this.” He proclaimed to the heavens of the silent room. Battering himself with the same hands he’d used only moments ago to strangle the life from the young nun. Ending her career in the clergy before she could do so to him. “No. I’m not a murderer.” So bold was his claim and yet there she lay, lips now purple, eyes bulged out from her skull. Murdered, and him with the exhausted hands. “That stone. It is the devil’s work! It is that which Cain used to murder Abel, the apple that tempted Eve, it is the harbinger of evil! It is the one at fault, not me!” 

He almost convinces himself, but deep down, at the core of his horrified being, the wretched truth hung heavily. “it is not the truth!” shouting absently to the pitch and podium of the main hall around him. Speaking to phantoms, trying to convince God as if there was one to listen. Slowly his face drew pale, spinning in place above the corpse of the murdered holy woman. Gazing to every corner of the room as if to find the source of the voice that now wormed about in his head. “Stop. Stop this now!” he clutched feverishly at his head, palms pressed flat into his ears. A story cannot persist without action, a reality cannot be perceived if it is not seen. 

He grows more frantic, rushing from his fixed spot upon the worn wood, to bluster to the spot he, each Sunday, delivered his delightful sermon. 

“Our father, who art in heaven—” Preaching to the air made him feel better, exorcising the demon of thought  while mindlessly preaching onward the senseless lies he’d spent so long convincing others were truth. Even now he whimpers and falters from his word. Snot and tears pouring down his face while he tried to silence the braying sound of the void. 

“You’re not real—it’s the work of—” the stone? He thinks, realizing with horror that it had conjured itself upon his Bible. The devil? He thinks next. But there is no devil here in the town of Widow’s Glen, no it is a horrifying truth to all who learn it. 

“Who are you? What is going on? 

It was the moment of pondering that lead him to look through the stone. Lifting it from the podium in his fingers so delicately that it may break should he even breathe upon it wrong. But what he sees—the moment he no longer does it is a figment lost on the air. A memory that there is not enough space for in the feeble confines of his head. Father Prescott, with the price of blood, has gotten the answer to every question any being could ever ask in reality once they’d gained sentience.  

Knowledge, however, is never the boon man thinks it to be. 

Falling to his knees in silent surrender, eyes fixated forward upon the endless void of space that existed beyond the atoms and molecules that created reality. Wet and vile tears turn to black, viscous, ichor. The tears of the void, entropy claiming the atoms that had dare spawn from it. In this quiet moment of despair, he wishes for death. Freedom from the burden he laid upon himself, but it is not one that comes. Nor would it ever. 

“Please…” Pleaded the priest, desperately casting that withered gaze of sunken eyes upon the brilliant shard of the unknown. A physical piece of Nothing left before him. 

“I didn’t want this… Bring her back…” But… Death was death. One of the very fundamental building blocks of creation. A cornerstone that if defied, would create vast consequences— 

“I am not a murderer! Undo what I have done! Take it back! I do not care what must be done, but I am not the monster it has made of me.” A statement uttered out of fear, grave regret of an action done out of miserable anguish. One that would only serve to cause more. 

It was in that fleeting moment of sentience from his situation, he noticed a door that should not be. One that had not been moments before. He knew what he was to do. Lifting her body free from the wood, he casts her form down the wicked stairwell. Listening to her sickening cackle as her ragged form caught every step on the way down. His eyes were miserable pinpricks to his soul now. Dark and filled with the misery he felt times a thousand, staring down as lime a serpent her wicked shape slithers it’s way down the final flight. Out of sight and into darkness of a room he did not understand. Solace to be had was that no one would surely find her, when he closed the door and it vanished before his eyes. 

For long suffering moments he stares at the wood in front of his face. The spot where the door had only just been. Staring with vacant lifeless eyes, all the emotions begin to pile over him. Burning the shoulders of his soul, carrying him so cleanly along the ethereal river of madness. With his half lidded gaze so empty, he can’t help when his body urges but one reaction out of him. Beckoning from the utter depths of his being bellows the most boisterous laughter he could have mustered as he falls to his knees before one of the sources of his encroaching misery. Fists bluster, pound his knuckles against the wood with an inhuman ferocity. Something that was sure to garner the attention of watchful eyes. 

Sister Maxwell peaked from around the corner, into the main hall to see what was happening. 

“Father Prescott? Are you okay?” 

She had never wanted for her actions to have causes such misery. Had she known that it would hurt him so to show such concern for his actions perhaps she would have kept her mouth quiet to the oncoming actions. But they’re not thoughts she gets to dwell in long. Not when his reaction to her appearance is that of abject horror. The twisted gaze hung with baggage beneath, boring into her body. As though he had seen a ghost, or worse.  

“No… No you’re dead!” But she was not, she stood so plainly before Jim. Her reaction to his face, one of shock, almost snaps him free from the blistering madness. Almost, but then he began to see things as they truly—”Shut up! Be quiet! I cannot think with your prattling on!” 

“Father Prescott, I didn’t say anything…” She took a step forth, holding an outstretched hand of soft concern. “Are you okay?” Another step stolen forth, and he looks up— 

“Stop! I told you I cannot think with you talking so incessantly!” he clutched at his ears once more with his bloodied knuckles, but when he looks up to see her he perceives her for what she really was. Though she looked so normal, fragile and concerned for him as she was. He could intuit something more, gazing into that stone, hearing the ethereal voice that crooned into his ear. He knew what manner of beast she was. Another demon come to threaten his flock. Festering. Withering. Rotting his mind to madness while it stank about in the body of a pig. Like an animal himself, he lunged across the breadth of the pews. Marred hands relentless as she desperately fought against him. But it was of no use. It was the repeating software an unholy vision. When her struggling ceases, and the sound of the voice narrating his actions did not corrupt him any longer… 

It's the same sight, only now his weathered hands were sodden with his own blood, the flesh of his knuckles ripped and torn. But the image was the same. The nun, strewn across the floor. Fear emblazoned permanently across her blue face, while the bulging eyes, soaked with tears, stared up into the void of nothing she had been sent to. There is not the same remorse to him. No, because, indeed he knew what he had killed had not been Sister Maxwell, it had been the bestial demon from perdition that had killed her and taken her shape. Staring at her body with cold eyes, he can feel the pulsing gaze of that stone stare at him with the same miserable call of the void. 

No remorse, no regret, he broke from his hateful stare to look back to the podium, and to gaze back so insistently at the stone that glimmers. Listening to its braying call and gentle promises. Looking upon it, and reflecting upon the misery from which it was wrought, there was certainty in his mind that he had been wrong about it. No, this was not the work of the Devil. The Devil was all around him. Infecting every living creature in this unfortunate town. Festering, corrupting. This was the sight of truth, the warm gaze of God himself rescuing him from the madness of perdition so that his story could be told in a righteous tome. Not one of warning but of celebration. 

“Where do you come from?” he asked so quietly, lifting it from the contented silence of the resting place upon his Bible. As he stared into it, once more it is not the dull marbled shape it had been when, it had somehow shone more brilliantly in the night glow of the moon. Shining with elegant colors of indescribable light. Heavenly glows and shades from a place he could not ever know, an unearthly unnatural color that was not of this Earthly spectrum and in his deluded madness he could only reason that it was because of its divine nature. Confirming his new suspicion about this thing and the voice that had spoke eloquently to every action. 

Twirling it so delicately in his grasp, looking into it, he feels so ethereal—special in the eyes of God, in ways he had always desired. No longer soaked in misery and hateful despair while those around him suffered. Not a victim of any. 

When he blinked, whiteness overtook his gaze. A blank page once more telling a trillion stories of unfathomable things. Nothingness, a lapse in time and his mind from communing with unearthly shapes. Holding dialogue with creatures he could not place shape or origin to beyond his presumption still of the divine. No longer did he know fear, only peaceful knowing the path he had been set upon was truly the righteous. Sponsored by Heaven’s light in spite of the way he had fearfully wavered, they did not look down upon him for such weakness. 

Sunday sermon. 

All seemed natural this morning. None had reason to question oddity or to bare irrational fear to any budding horrors that lingered beneath the surface of their lives. Instead, the priest that they had trusted so implicitly welcomed them into the church with welcoming arms. Standing at the door as his flock was shepherded to sit with him and this new book that was to be written. The epoch had been upon them, and only he was keen to its arrival, and for that he pitied them. He ushered his flock to the church, lining them in the pews, comforting them in their seats, and ushering their children into the new door that led to what he proclaimed the Sunday school in the basement. Where they would be welcomed with open arms by Sister Maxwell, waiting to teach them the love God held for all things of this Earth. 

But it was that, which unsettled the denizens of Widow’s Glen. Such a small thing to twist, but it was not hard for them as a mass to recognize that the door had not been there in the days prior. Though they had no reason to assume anything miserably dark. It is when the Father takes the podium do they wrinkle. Adorned in gaudy colors, dressed in gowns now that would not have been approved by Cardinal or papacy alike, they look to each other in confusion. 

“Welcome, my children. I will not mince words, or relent to the same Sunday stories that prolonged our time in this House of God. As we know, the Baxters had come to this town in search of an escape, and instead poor Hugh had looked into the dark heart of some miserable existence and he blinked. Possessed by some unrelenting evil, he caused many a scene in our town. But the demon was driven from him.” 

They stare in concern as he continued on, not locking himself behind the pew or to be striking word from the Bible he had cherished so his whole life. Fingers, long and slender as they were, drug so delicately along the splintered corner of its wooden surface. Each word he speaks sends further chills up the lengths of spines and it becomes a mob when Freddy Burkins is the first to rush for the door. Trying with futile effort to yank and pound, and try with all his might to bound through the wooden door, only to find such was impossible. 

“Freddy Burkins. You too have blinked… Do not let evil take you too.” He points an accusatory finger, and the whole of his mass break from their listening on fearful ears, to joining the young man at the door. “I weep for you all… you’ve allowed darkness I to your soul… I beckon you all to have a seat, and listen to reason. I do not steer you astray. I am your shepherd, and you my flock. Stray not toward the teeth of wolves and predators.” No matter the strength or effort, they find they are trapped. And they relent to his word. Holding dear their loved ones, and never letting their terror soaked gaze stray from the priest at the head of the church. Standing there still with his arms stretched to his flock as they rejoin with their seats. 

“Freddy Burkins. I ask that you join me near the podium.” He called out with gratuitous sweep of his worn hand. Wearing beaming smile, bright as the elegant misshapen amber stone that hung now from his neck. The man, only five years the junior of the priest himself hesitates greatly. Nothing but abject fear alights in the depths of his sea blues when he crests the center aisle. Taking very idle pacing steps but daring not walk faster than that. But try as he might, linger as he did, he found himself at the head of the church all the same. “Why do you run? Why are you afraid?” 

But the man had little verbal answer. There was an undeniable air now to the father that offered much discomfort. A wordless horror that seemed to bake itself into the many wrong angles of his now corrupted being. But there was no answer as to why, simply that by all measures, he was wrong. Wrong in a sense of nature, like some grand thing pretending as it might to act as human. But merely as if it were playing a part more than they were meeting criteria.  

“I am the same man I was last Sunday, and the one before that.” He commands of the church, a building rage swelling like a roaring fire in his eyes. One as overt as the basic discomfort his being caused now, and the mass recoiled, as did Freddy himself, standing beside the priest, doused in these unholy robes. Though they outnumbered him, they felt frozen by fear, rooted in the spots their bodies had claimed. “I am still nothing but a messenger. A messenger of God’s divine word. I bring you a sermon once again to prove such. No longer addled, coaxed to silence by fear. I am a changed man after driving devils from this town.” 

“Where’s Sister Maxwell?” 

It was a simple question, one that very briefly gave pause to the priest. But even so, he has an answer all the same. Pointing a thin unclean finger to the door behind the podium, one that by all rights should have merely acted as a back door to the church. It offered little solace as an answer. Neither did his continued prattling. 

“As I have told you all, she brings the message of God’s love to your children in the new Sunday School in the freshly renovated basement.” They question it, of course they do. But the mad vocal piece to some unbelievable abyssal thing does not offer more than his disjointed prattling. He has given in, he has seen the divine light. Rest assured that they would join him. It’s not until one man makes break, now for the door behind the podium rather than the one at the end of the aisle, that more chaos is ensured to come. Swinging the door wide and hard to reclaim his child and leave this now damned ground, rather than the crooked basement stairs that there had been, he finds only the wall itself behind the door. Old wood shape, pressed against the paneling, and nothing more. Frustrated fury blazes itself through the whole of this terrified mass, confusion aching at its center. They had seen their children go down the stairs, they had looked down at those splintered wood things with their own eyes and now there was nothing. There are those in the crowd that howl in anguish, terrified for what could become of their babes when delivered unto the unknown in such a way.  

Their raucous sounds of fettered despair are interrupted when the priest grabs the man by his scalp, to pull him away from the altar and the door. There is more of a crazed haze pulling its eldritch wool over his once kind eyes. Sunken and buried into dark circles that hang heavy around them, he gazes upon them all as though they themselves were as much the demons as those he had so expertly driven away. 

“In this house of the lord, I will not have you making a mockery of me. You will be punished for interrupting the Sunday service, Paul. As will you, Freddy.” A disgusting level of strength displays itself in the veins and bones of this shape that had been so kindly and welcoming to his congregation, the two men try to scramble and fight against his one-armed wrestling of their sturdier shapes, but to no avail. With so little effort he has both men frozen upon their knees, with all others watching on in fear. Still worn in their morose calls for mercy against the disappearance of their children, the rest hold each other, trying to rationalize these miserable visions that had poisoned their sight. 

“You must drink of his blood, consumed of his flesh.” A jagged metal shard of a knife is produced from his sleeve. None knew where his actions would go next, but a shout in uneven symmetry is born from the crowd, all rising to their feet until he raises his hand to their protests. The sway he held was instantaneous a result, the fear compelled them once more to remain frozen. The hand raised aloft by this infernal priest is met with the crooked dagger, dragging it along the length of his palm. When enough of his dark and viscous ichor is bubbled to the surface, he smears it upon the features of both men. Revealing that what should have been deep browning crimson, had been instead filtered into a sickly grey black. Thicker than that of a man’s blood, and at its thickest it was like looking into the vast void of entropy all its own. Before more protests could ring themselves to life, the priest opens his robes. Taking knife to his own abdomen to cut two wafer thin pieces from his flesh. To force them into the men’s mouths. 

Through hacking and vomiting, he delivers his next words. Confidently speaking over his flock. “God has shown himself to me!” He proclaimed proudly, holding aloft his lovely shining stone. “Though I cannot remember his divine visage, he appeared to me, and showed me the demons who lived among us! This town is infected at the roots. The unholy have buried themselves into every piece of our beloved town. We must start anew! Beginning from nothing as Noah did with his ark.”  

It is with great delight that the pastor held the realization that with this stone, he could open a gateway. A gateway to the realm of untold divinity. 

“A realm of untold divinity.” He parroted the voice in his mind, the one that opened his eyes to the demonic presence invading his humble town. 

He knew that to open the gate to untold glory, and the kingdom of the divine, he would need to do something drastic. 

Something drastic. Looking down upon the amber stone, a maddened smile burned its way across his twisting features. To the horrified eyes of the onlookers of the audience before him, this grand display of the children of God, he raises the amber stone. Drowning it in that twisted maw, swallowing its jagged shape down his throat to welcome it into the darkness. 

“Unto us I deliver, the kingdom of Heaven! I deliver us from evil, the suffering of madness and demons! This town shall be where He comes. His presence will bless us in every way.” In haste, he rips open his frock, baring his chest to the men and women of Widow’s Glen. For a moment there is nothing. Silence from the mothers and fathers who clutched at imaginary pearls, and mourned for children they would never see. Flesh of his sternum bulges, welcomingly, to the presence of writhing tendrils beneath. Shapes of unimaginable nature, things so blasphemously cosmic the feeble mind of humankind could scantly even picture them. In a gory display of viscera and misery, his ribcage opens. Welcoming forth the legs of some spider-like thing from the abyss. Flashes in vision, loss of sense, and domination of self, overtake not just the still living priest, but the whole of his flock as well. 

It is the buzzing sound of static whispered onto the surface of reality. The jagged shape of many angled things of other dimensions piercing their way to be perceived where they shouldn’t. When he awakes on the floor before his podium, the priest feels the aches on his abdomen. The misery of being used as nothing more than a door, but the memory of what had come forth does not exist. His mind did not allow for it. What was there instead was a white void of thought, occupying the same span of time. 

Resting fervently upon the palms of his hands and bent knee, he wretches. Heaving heartily, there is no relief until more thick black mucus is expelled from his throat in place of bile. Once, twice, thrice is he overwhelmed by the need to purge whatever he’d perceived from his body and soul. All he could think about was the martyr he’d become for his flock. How he’d so readily sacrifice himself for his people. 

Haggard bloodshot eyes look up from the wooden floor. To see how the citizens of Widow’s Glen had accepted the heaven he delivered unto them. Faces were twisted, contorted into looks of permanent horror. The terror of acceptance alighted on so many features, while so many others stared awestruck in misery at whatever they’d beheld. 

“The... Portal to the kingdom of the divine...” He repeated to himself. Soured in thought by the return of the narration that guided his hand. This time holding in its tone to him what he could only discern as mockery. “The kingdom of the divine! That’s what you said!” He screamed with fettered rage, pounding a petulant fist against the wood beneath him. Steadily, the face hung itself low from the noose of realization when the voice continued. Though the voice had said ‘divine’, it did not specify it was those that he thought of as such. 

“No... No God--” Is not real, he thought in misery to the beckoning song sung to him eternal by the ethereal voice. It is the grand trickery of some devil, he tried to rationalize, he had been fooled. All of the thoughts raced to his mind trying to explain away how he’d fed the sanity and consciousness of all who had trusted him. God. The devil. Concepts created by man, to explain their own fear and misunderstandings of the truer reality. 

Clutching at his head, he dug his nails in. Burrowing their sharp edge into his scalp until he drew more of that horrible fluid into his greying hair. So lost was he, in his own suffering, that he paid little attention to the shape circling around him now. Standing lithe, towering over him with horns that nearly scraped the cross beams of the ceiling. Black as pitch, an absence of all light. As though the void itself circled around him. 

“Please.” The miserable heap of a shape moaned in such agony. “Please, stop... I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted to help them.” Yet that was always what the cobble paving the road to perdition had written upon it. Wasn’t it? “No more death... Please...” Sobbing like a babe who had just been awoken for the first time, he increasingly shrunk himself at the feet of the towering figure. 

No more death? 

Spoke the narrative ethereal voice in his mind. “No more death, no more suffering. There... There must be something you can do...” The abyssal figure stops its paces when it reaches the spot before the priest’s simpering head. Though it had no features though it had no soul to its voice. The priest could practically hear the smile in the way it spoke in his aching mind. And indeed, I did smile in spirit. Looking down upon this miserable shape that had wrought so much misery in my name. A name he dared not speak, as his mind had dared not remember. Hovering before his face with my own, with nothing but glee in my eyes. 

Jonathan Prescott had been a man of the cloth since adolescence, always had I known him to find intrigue in the most unusual of things. Always too did he find a way to merge this love for the unusual with his love for the Lord and the Holy Spirit. Though I had not spoken to him for many a year prior to my return to Widow’s Glen, I had heard many a warm story of how he had aided and restored faith in a community we had both called home for many years in our growing ages. Often, I was admonished in that time for the envious nature of my feelings for his success, and as often did I repent my sin of envy before my Lord and Savior. 

Though, what had become envy soon became concern. It was on the eve of January 22nd last year that the Cardinal and I received word that, at the request of many citizens in this quaint small town, Father Prescott had begun to perform exorcisms. Those bathed in the unholy sin of our modern media may not find this so odd a fact, but the truth of the matter is in the last centuries exorcism has not been a performance of our faith. It has become something coopted by the sinning charlatan grifters looking to capitalize off of fears of the unassuming masses. We of the cloth do not judge those who fear, but those who perform. We urge you to seek refuge in the house of the lord, repent, and find the holy light of your own discovery. So, when word had come to us that they had begun to be performed by a man of the church in this small town, the concern is surely understandable. 

For many months we conversed with my brother of the cloth, finding at first no ill will or intent in his performing of these actions. Merely seeking to provide a sense of comfort to those of his flock who had seemingly lost their way and hoped to use the theatrics of prayer and banishment of unholy spirits to inspire them to return to his steeple. 

We did not approve. 

Though, not malicious, we did find the actions manipulative. Deceit was no way to garner followers to the lord. That is a crook only used by the shepherd of the Devil, and we told him as much. We informed him that what he was doing was proving nothing but that the church would happily lie if it meant the pews filled.  

Father Prescott did not see things our way and cut contact off. 

Though there had not been immediate concern, as the whispering in our ear showed that these performances had either dwindled or ceased wholesale. But in more months still, all word from the town of Widow’s Glen had silenced. Not from Father Prescott, not from Sister Maxwell, and not from any of his congregation. We had feared the lambs had lost their way, or something worse had transpired. It was with heavy heart that I volunteered to investigate for the Cardinal. 

Widow’s Glen is a small town, tucked and hidden away and cradled among the mountains, it would take perhaps forty minutes at a brisk jog to reach one side of town to the other. Founded at the end of the California Gold Rush, it was settled first by the Widow Maxine Smith, who had lost her love to the sin of greed. Taking their small family, as well as fellow travelers they had caravaned with. They settled in this veritable fortress of nature, protected on all four sides by snowcapped peaks. A population now cresting about three hundred, it was certainly the sort of comfortable place where everyone knew one another by name. For better or worse. 

When I arrived, there was an eerie silence that overtook the whole edge of this secluded mountain town. Though this time of year’s weather was treacherous, it ever did little to pry the denizens away from their duties or from simply enjoying the air of the outside. When my car peaked over the hill and I found my space in the lot in front of the church, I was instead met with silence. Not the beating heart of smalltown America that had once thrived and beat like a drum of celebration, welcoming their connection to the lord. Only the howl of the easterly wind that blew at my back coldly when I stepped onto the porch of the church. It always stood out, a shard of white bone against the ever-grey skies of this quaint little place. But now these steps where I sang my first sermon felt more crooked than I had ever been used to. As though my head spun while approaching this consecrated ground. 

Be it the air of returning to this familiar place, the haunting nature of its barren streets, or the utter silence that had consumed me, I did not know. 

Though there were no other cars, on the road or in the lot, I heard the bellowing of the organ within. Pounding away unevenly at notes, trying loosely with failure to coerce themselves into a song. Instead, what spewed forth like an unearthly cacophony on the wind was a string of unfounded broken flat sounds from what were surely untalented fingers. My fingers felt the chill of the day, surely, which is why my hands, tinted so deeply red, went white knuckle as they furled around cold iron knob to pull the church doors open. 

To be greeted with the same emptiness. 

Though one does not ever suspect a church to be bustling outside of Sunday service, to find it empty in totality was an oddity. Especially in a town such as this. Any fear of unsavory presence was melted away by the sight of Father Prescott’s cat, Patrick, bounding along the grand organ of the church. Staring at me with a sense of recognition in those deep emerald eyes, it is but a second before he leapt away and scurried into the back rooms of the church. 

All had been left where it lies. As if the entire church was vacated mid-service, all letting their holy books fall to the floor at their feet and nudging and forcing their seats out of their way. I felt a great sense of otherworldly discomfort as I dredged through the space, across creaky wooden floors. Dust upon every surface I could see. My mind raced with scenario after scenario of what could have poisoned the well of all these affluent minds in such sudden moments of unfathomable loss. But my surroundings offered little in the way of answers, only more dust and discarded books. 

Comfort had been found clutching my rosary in my pocket. Feeling quite the stereotype as I plucked one of the books from its home on the floor with the mites to take for additional relief from the edge that began to bore its way into my mind. I felt comfort, at least, in that moment while I had God to deliver me from evil. Though I am not the superstitious type to utter prayers to St. Michael under my breath, I did call for the Lord to deliver me safely from whatever was going on. Because though when I dared to look upon demons as more metaphorical than metaphysical, something was aflare here beyond the normal. From the moment I stepped from the door of my car to take in the swelling feeling of that unforgiving cool breeze, the hairs upon my neck stood on end. As if my body and soul were trying on some primordial level to let me know that I needed to abscond from this place and not look back as I did so. 

But faith instead delivered me forward. It kept my feet plunging forward into whatever dark mystery lay at my feet. So desperately I wish it hadn’t. 

No matter where I went or explored in this church I knew so well, I had found nothing more than the nest made by dear Patrick. When I tell you this, it’s in no small measure. I had grown up in this church, exploring every nook, every dark cranny to be had. Father Prescott and myself would often find various spaces and crevices where our adult handlers could not reach, and I had hoped under some shadow of belief that perhaps I’d glimmer even an answer there. Vacant air, dust, and loose smatterings of paw prints upon random surfaces one could have found scraps, morsels, or the loose presence of a mouse. Nothing more. 

The only glimmer of life I had encountered was Patrick, the spritely old cat, older than a decade as he was. Still seemed ever the energetic soul. But through the south facing window I could see out into the mist of the town. A figure doused in some indiscernible color, of unrecognizable shape, shambling through the road back to the shadows. Though the reaction of my conscious mind once again told me to turn on heel and return to the cardinal with lies that all was well, my rational self instead had me rush to the door. Bursting through as the only source of kineticism in this abandoned place, I no longer saw shape of any sort. Just the town, void of all life as it had been before I stepped through the doors of its sacred holy place. 

Perhaps I was seeing things, I had told myself. But again, as if acting upon every nervous impulse my body had, my more humane side came forth. Huffing and somewhat haggard from years of inactivity, I jogged from the doors of the church to where I had seen the shape and found nothing. Yet further still the hair stood sharply on my neck. Never even for a moment lowering itself from its ever-aware state. Warning me and my labored breath that perhaps eyes unseen were watching me as readily as I sought to be seen. 

Shuffling in the twisting forms of these decrepit old homes and buildings, I heard something lingering about among furniture inside. Perhaps even the crunch of shoes upon broken glass if my ears had not deceived me. Something coming from the Old Mare Herron’s (it is what she asked us to call her, not a form of detraction) General Store. All, as I had seen of this town, had been barren to this point. Desperate was my mind to even behold or perceive another living sentient shape in this unfathomable limbo I had found. This ghastly haunting revision to what had been my childhood hometown.  

“Hello?” I called out through heavy pants, rushing in all my zealousness toward the shop’s main entrance with the hopes taking eternal shape in the back of my mind. “Is anyone there?” I barely noted the desperation in my tone, but it had become a fear that I was being punished. That through some infernal damnation I had found myself to perdition in spite of my acceptance of Christ and my dedication to the church. I had turned my back upon my town and fellow man, and perhaps this grueling metaphor of isolation was some cosmic way of punishing me for daring to not find myself locked down in this town. To live and die here as my brothers and father. To be doomed to rot here alive, as my mother, forgetting all semblance of myself.  

I had found purpose. I had found God. Was that not enough? 

Hesitantly I found the front door had been shattered, my feet clambering over the glass beneath me. Shuffling against various pieces of overturned furniture, I pressed myself deeper onward into the building. Clambering my way into what little version of a backroom this small place had. To my shock I found a lost little lamb. A child. A young girl of not older than four years old, curled upon herself in the corner of the room. Her face hidden from me while I approach. 

“Are you alright, my child?” With a gentle hand, I reached for her. With a safe welcoming step, I moved closer toward her. She did not speak to me, instead she only sobbed into her hands. Wordless sobs of a child afraid. As I wondered what had made her so fearful, I am alarmed by a voice at my back, outside the store. 

“Hello?” It sounded labored, exhausted. “Is anyone there?” A familiar voice, that in my moment of confusion I could not place—My gaze had reverted to the door, out into the light of day from this cold and unforgiving darkness. When it returned it was upon nothing. An empty corner occupied with nothing but cobwebs and the same moldy stench that had occupied this place when it had not been abandoned. 

“Yes, hello?” I called back out to the voice futilely, rushing back out of the building. Hoping to God himself that I may be free from this burdensome day already. And that when all was over, I may rest my head peacefully upon my pillow and be consumed only by dream. Reaching the point from which I had heard the voice. The street on which I had stood only moments earlier, I stared blankly out into the abyssal mist. My voice. It had been my voice. In a sudden moment it reverberated in my mind, and it coldly struck me that it was like an echo of myself from moments ago even further. Other than that haunting image of a child, I still remained alone. 

But in realizing how selfish I was in leaving behind a scared child for my own selfish desire to stumble upon any other, I rushed back into the store. Though I was still burdened by the lonesome image of the vacant store, I once more heard shuffling in the back. Among the glass and shelving. My mind had been playing with me and had made me waver. Feeling my fingers furl in some sense of ancient fear around my rosary again, the goosebumps that rose along my arms until they consumed my whole body were impossible to ignore. I was much less ready to meet this lingering shape, than I had been to charge confidently outside to whatever danger could have existed out there. 

The cowardice of my actions is not lost upon me in that moment or this one in hindsight. I have asked God for forgiveness every moment since then. That I would abandon a child in their moment of need because I selfishly wanted nothing more than relief from my own fear. But it is with much regret that I say I should have listened to my first impulses. To burst from this town, to leave this miserable town once again. 

I heard a rhythmic pounding against the wall beyond the swinging door.  

Desperately to myself I muttered repetitive affirmation that God was indeed my shepherd, and through this madness he would see me through. I thought once more of my dear friend, Father Prescott. How he had only wanted to offer solace and peace to people of this town, never once had I questioned why he had held such a sudden urge to do so. How long had this been happening? How long had this lingering satanic corruption darkly twisted this place that I once called home? Long had I abandoned it, turned a blind eye to let others take care of all those I no longer wanted to even look at, and now here I was. Seemingly far too late. 

The wild sound of meat beating against stone ceases for a single moment. Accompanied by the horrible sound of fleshy squelching. A pained gurgle, sounding less human and more monstrous in its own right, fills the silent void that came from the ceasing of the creature’s own action. I look back to the door at my back and see the freedom I walk away from. The comforting light is not the warmth of the sun, but the dull grey diffusion of such—Much of it still not being able to pierce that thick mountain veil even this late in the day. But it is better than the sight I beheld when I twisted my head back around toward the backroom. As that violent bashing continued, the breadth of my surroundings changed. When I had first entered, short of broken glass, it appeared that this store was little more than dusty. But now when I beheld it, the store looked as though it had been abandoned for years. 

Ceiling tiles hung loosely from their brackets, fluorescent lights either shattered, or now dangling to the floor, walls stained by moisture seeming to become a habitat for microbes and spores of different breeds of mold and filth. After the brief silence, the pounding becomes more insistent. Harshly and violently, while I timidly proceeded through this small store. What was truly seconds seemed to span for hours in my fearful mind. The only thing shaking me free from the overwhelming sea of terror was each of those hard sounds slapping against the concrete wall of the backroom. 

My rosary lifted itself free from my pocket, clenched tightly in my grasp as I held it before me as a shield between me and whatever evil that lingered here. The sight had my heart throbbing in the back of my throat, were it not so utterly confounding I am confident I would have thrown up. The figure stood, stretched to be not too much taller than myself. Its proportions sickly, and uneven, with a long thin torso, and arms that nearly hung down to the floor. This unholy aberration stood with me at its hind, facing a bloodied smear against the concrete, while a puddle formed itself at its malformed feet. 

When my steps crunched over the vast swaths of shattered glass, it goes alert. Turning in a swift motion to face me, I see its face. Or where one would have been. The horrible pounding sound had been this thing attempting to put its face through the now bloodied wall, leaving little more than a bloodied humanoid smear across ripped and torn musculature and crimson-soaked skull. It could not see me, I say as such because of the way it lurched forward. Breathing labored through the jaw that hung freely from its ravaged face. I was utterly frozen. Locked to the floor beneath my feet, staring straight at it whilst it began to encircle me. Attempting by all rights to determine what was before it. Sweat poured down my brow, my face immediately drenched. It lifted its broken fingers up, to show that the long crimson swipes alongside the facial smear on the wall, had belonged to the worn down and bloodied uneven stumps that it painfully tried to reach out toward me. 

It spoke to me—Or at the very least attempted by all measured reason to speak out at whomever may have been there. Ragged sobbing sounds fill that gap of a void where words would have been. Which only served to anguish this twisted thing more. When it lingers forward another step, I thrust my rosary and fist unto the crest of its brow. Watching it fall to the ground, finally I turn to run free from my imprisonment of fear. I hear it call out as best as it can before it gives as much chase as I did flee. When I am free from the store, and no longer hear it behind me, I look back and I see the dilapidated store is once more simply... dusty and abandoned. The creature gone as quickly as I had found it. I needed to be free from whatever Hell I had walked into. 

I ran without rest back to the church, hoping to find my car, but instead I was greeted by the empty lot once again. As I had been when I first got to this infernal town. I felt nauseous, sick to my stomach. Breathing had become so difficult I feared that I may pass out at any second. Instead, I found refuge once more in the church. The holy place offering itself to me as a peaceful respite from the oddities and horrific visions. It seemed unchanged. Still abandoned, yes, but none the worse for wear. For a moment I thought sanity had left me. That all of this had been but a dream, or a horrific hallucination that I could not escape from. Creeping from the door, slowly I lingered back through the church to stand behind the podium and look upon the empty pews. 

God had always been the answer to my questions. I had been shielded for so long from the harm of these lingering dark thoughts or the tormenting fears of the unknown that shook me to my core. Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. 

“Our father, who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name—I beg of you to deliver me from evil. Protect me from whatever spirits live in this damned place.” I spoke loudly, affirming to myself that all would be well if I only kept that tight grasp upon myself. After repeating myself for long lingering moments, I finally open my eyes to look upon the old church where I’d practically grown as a man. The sea of dust, the flaked and chipped white paint of the walls. Another few deep breaths taken, but the final one is strangled in my throat. The sound of deep cackling rose from beneath the floorboards, passing through the spaces between to curse my ears.  

But it was further rotting at my soul to remember there was no basement to this church. Further so that the door behind me, nestled into the corner of the wall was as much fiction as the basement itself. It was something easy to not think much of. A door that wasn’t there before, given its position, it surely just led outside. It had been years since I was here, it would stand to reason that Father Prescott had decided to change the layout. But infernal curiosity lingered damnably in my head. When I opened this mysterious door, instead of leading me outside as it by all measure should have, it opened to a staircase. One I did not recognize, one that should not have been. 

But I moved on my own. 

Every step made against my will drags me down into the darkness of the basement below. That laughter grew louder and clearer the further it consumed me. Feminine as it was, there was a further wrongness about it that I failed to impress words upon. There was an evil in it, a touch of Hell as I believed it lingering within every breathy sound. Every coddling coo uttered out to the unseen things from this woman below. 

“I... I’m sorry to bother you...” I called out, despite the voice belonging to a woman, I had hoped for familiarity. Something easier than whatever I had been handed. But worse was it when I reached the midway point to the landing. Turning myself to finally stare down the remainder of the staircase, I see a figure hunched over. Sat beneath the only light that illuminated this decrepit place of dirt and brick. It cradled something between its arms. “Something odd has become of this town--” My tone wavered; shaky voice barely able to come out over her gentle comforting of whatever she had been holding. Explaining what I had experienced thus far rationally would make me sound a mad fool. Not that this was any more normal, but I had not encountered any others that seemed so... Lucid... In spite of this clear madness. I felt it my only way to acquire answers. As praying for my deliverance from evil would do no such thing. “I don’t intend to take another moment of your time. Is Father Prescott here?” 

I thought it didn’t hear me. So, I repeated the final question. Daring to steal a step downward towards the darkness. Allowing for a little more of the sight to come into view. If this thing were human, it was indeed wearing a habit. So, for a blistering second, I feel overcome with a wash of relief. Though when she laughed at my repeated question, it felt silly to have let hope creep in so suddenly. 

“No.” She sang in a delighted tone, hanging off the single syllable for a second longer than needed. Her voice was as corrupt and wrong as her laugh, just listening to her nearly made me jump free of my skin. 

“Sister Maxwell?” I had not seen her since last I had been here. The woman, easily a decade my junior, had been so spritely and kind before. That was, perhaps, why I nearly fainted just when she shushed me with a cold bluing finger raised to her unseen lips. 

“Hush now. You’ll wake the children. They’ve just had a very important lesson and need to rest.” 

It certainly gave me pause. Children? I did not reach further than halfway down the remaining flight before the cold chill of reality burned its way along my spine. The dark realization of what I’d beheld was more than I’d wanted to believe. At the center of the dark room, this cold figure sat rocking in her chair. Cradling in her arms what appeared to be nothing more than a bloodied lump of flesh, whose origin I dared not imagine. But the sight that surrounded her was far worse to behold. Faces I had recognized, those who had barely crested the confines of adolescence, and those far younger who I did not. Strewn about in various states of dismantled disarray, all that the light had dared to touch stained with the burning color of their soul and ichor laid bare before me beneath that house of God. 

Stumbling over myself to turn back up the stairs, it’s when she looks at me with her malformed features that I was once again frozen. Unforgiveable was her crimes already, innumerable as they had been, staining every square inch of this impossible basement. So too had she mutilated herself. I could see on her face, the marks left by her own nails—torn and ripping downward, liberating her lips from her face. Peeled eyelids to stare forth through me and never succumb a second to blink. Before, when I had seen her last, she had been a beautiful young woman. Free of the sin of vanity that befell many others her age, now she would have appeared in a better state had she been in a car accident. 

“Father Malloy? It’s so good to see you again.” I did not question how she could articulate so fluidly with her mouth and face in such an abominable state I wish I could forget. I instead turned, scrambling to run back up the creaking old wood steps I had come. To flee from the danger of this thing. “No don’t leave! We must catch up! How am I to care for these children all my own?” She beckoned. I could hear her rise from her chair, but I dared not look back. The mere sound of that meaty lump striking the stone floor below her and that wicked cackling ran my blood cold enough to freeze my heart solid. I needed not the added visual to join it. Fleeing back and away up the stairs, I scrambled to close the door behind me—Only to find that there had not ever been one to begin with. As I had known before even stepping downward. 

My heart pounded in my chest, and the sight that greeted me was not much more a greater comfort than the horror I left at my back. The full pews, once more lined up evenly and orderly as they should be, every seat occupied across the whole church. Night had become to take hold, and with no lights to the building I could do little more than make out the silhouettes of each shape.  

They did not move, they did not acknowledge me, and I suppose, for all that had been, it was a respite in some fashion. I was not freed and delivered from this evil yet, but I had been offered a moment's breath from the repeated horror. I lingered a moment, trying to catch myself up in breath and mind, but as further those figures did not move, further did it become harder to breathe. All the while I had stood there, with my hand pressed to the wall, and trying to breathe peacefully, these figures had not moved. 

Not coughed, not shuffled uncomfortably, not even so much as a recognition of life. I tried not to give in to that curiosity, but I was already stranded here in the mountains. Something had already haunted me so greatly—There was little worth losing to check. All of them were ancient... Mummified corpses, dried in totality, and covered head to toe in cobwebs as though they had been left to rot there for longer than I dare think. Each one had their decrepit rotted heads pointed in different directions, and I felt that it may have been representative of their final thoughts. Some looking up to ponder the heavens. Were they truly protected by the holy light that governed over them? Some at their hands at whatever mishappen thing had fused by now to their palms, and what hadn’t withered away. Would they truly be shepherded to the pearly gates of St. Peter? A noted few had their heads buried in their hands. Withered by some startling revelation I chose not to place. I felt an odd connection of sorts to them. 

I was tired. 

It had only been a few hours wandering through this town as a fearful mess. But I felt I had been running for years. My eyes felt heavy, my bones felt like stone. But I feared if I sat for even a moment with these men, that I would be in the same situation. 

In my life this had been a place of God. A house of love and worship for our lord and savior, to welcome the Holy Spirit into us. As I returned to the podium, to look upon the marred and twisted skeletal faces of this rotted congregation I realized. Something had taken God from this place. By some other twisted rule did this place fall, the kingdom of heaven was some long distant memory. I could not stay in this church and remain safe. Nowhere in this place would I be safe. No matter how much I prayed and called out, God did not listen either. 

I am sure I broke my fingers, pounding furiously against the podium until my knuckles bled. Consumed by anguish and tears. It was so hard to even think. To feel so abandoned in my darkest hour, I do not know how long I stood there in the darkness. Consumed by fear, pulled away from the divine light of my Lord. It felt like an eternity that I stood there weeping miserably. I could not falter, I could not. If I was to escape this place, it was down to me to bring the word of God back and restore order from where it had been robbed. Looking out upon this disturbing gathering of familiar corpses, I liberate myself from the confines of the church’s four walls. To once more linger out into the mist. I did not care any longer what horrors awaited me. My body felt numb, and I did little more than shamble back up the street through the mist. Taking a second to look back at the church, I let it disappear from my view when I hear the doors slam shut behind me. 

Up the path of main street, I am greeted to more sights of how sudden everything had collapsed in this once peaceful place. Cars sit in the middle of the street, their doors ripped open. Rusted husks, as the Old Mare’s store had been a molded rotten one. The stain of time baked into every pore of this town as I was perceiving it in that moment. I hear the sound, the pounding once more. But this time I ignored it and pressed on down the street. Even when I heard the call and response of my own voice, I did not buy in to this towns twisted new corruption of divine creation. 

Max’s Diner. 

I grew up in this town. When my parents passed from this Earth my aunt took me in. Being so young the tragedy of their demise never wore on me until I was older. But by then I had discovered God, and through faith I had quenched the fires of any stoking despair that could have been. They had rejoined God in Heaven. 

I sat at the same booth Father Prescott and I did when we were both boys. Studying to reach our current station. Mountains of books surrounded us at our booth so that we could receive our Master of Divinity. While I was alone, my vacant eyes flushed forward, intently peering at nothing through the broken glass. Idly hoping that my feigned ignorance of the world around me would undo any joy taken by whatever demon who plagued my home. With each blink, reality seemed to shift before me. Abandoned and dusty, molded and rotten, freshly left, on a cycle like looking through a View-Master of my deepest most worrisome nightmares. 

“We’ve been abandoned, my friend.” I don’t look up at the figure that stands at the edge of the table. But I knew who it was. Keeping my eyes fixated forward, I could feel them start to well up with discomforted tears. “I tried to keep these people safe.” He was the only consistent, keeping his youthful form through every blink. “But no one was listening—No, worse.” So the demon took the form of my oldest friend. Trying to turn my trust in him and memory of him against my perception. Though he spoke, I did not pay it any mind. I listened to every word, mind you. But I knew them to be fiction made up to shake me of my faith. To make me fall victim to this place as the others had. He spoke how God no longer listened. When he prayed now to the God that had failed them, now he only heard laughter. Something mocking their belief, or that the idea their faith would deliver them from perdition. 

When I desired to no longer listen, I rose in an attempt to leave. He was frantic when he latched onto me. Desperately trying to get me to understand, in his words, that God was not here. I shoved the demon from my body, and when I did his malformed shape became realized. Twisted and wrong as that creature hours earlier. Agonized, it screamed in pain by the horrific transformation created by the shifting of its flesh. Or maybe it had always been this shape, and it had been but glamoured in my mind by the unspeakable evils that no longer chose to lay dormant to earn my trust so that it may have corrupted me as it was. It looked at me with those twisted inhuman eyes, pleading in a voice cascading from a mouth that no longer could utter human sounds. 

But I did not listen. Nor did I listen when it asked me for mercy of death. I was not a warrior of Heaven, and it would not be by my hand that any life was taken... When it fled off into the night, I tried to wander the streets again. Like I was pulling myself by some unseen lure to the edge of the town. Perhaps I’d hoped that if the words were generous, I could merely brave the mountains on foot and be free of all manners of horror. 

I passed by more familiar sights, twisted in agony in such unearthly ways. Buildings that had occupied my memories bent in shapes that should not have been possible. They were warnings I should have heeded, so too were the ones from my agonized friend. I do not remember what I saw when I got to the edge of town. Not because of a lapse in my memory, but because it’s as though I am not allowed to remember. Like what I saw was far beyond the scope of my comprehension. But this place is not right. Time has folded in on itself, laws and rules of fundamental reality we knew once as fact simply no longer apply. 

Every time I try to remember what I saw beyond the sign welcoming new travelers to Widow’s Glen, my mind can only show me a white blank space. Like a page unwritten, occupied by the worst nightmares imaginable. All I can manage to piece together beyond that are the eyes that peered at me curiously as I made my defiant stance against whatever was happening. Ever shifting between two contrasting colors, malformed three lobed pupil set in its center. Cold and unfeeling as it unwaveringly peered through the depths of my being. 

The next moment that I can recall is stumbling back in the other direction. Primordial fear once more settling in. I called out to God for liberation from this pain, but I received nothing. No. Worse. I received laughter from some horrible invisible thing. Mocking me and my terror, as I stumbled past other visions of myself, walking back towards the edge of town from whence I’d come. 

I returned to the church, empty once more, and sat idly in the pews. 

It is with great discomfort that I inform you, the reader, that we are not but specks in the grand dust bowl of eternity. In the whole of reality there are creatures that look upon us, as we look upon bacteria beneath the lens of a microscope. Things of incomprehensible origin exist in the span of our reality. Though, given their unimaginable scope, I suppose it is no longer fair to refer to it in the possessive form. As I can no longer view it as ours. It belongs to them. We merely live and habitat ourselves within.  

If there had ever been a God listening, we are no longer shepherded by his guiding crook, and it is no longer our prayers he answers. We sit in the infernal abyss, staring at the wall and hoping for some other thing to solve our problems. 

I have been abandoned. We have been abandoned. There is not but darkness beyond the veil of eternity, not Heaven nor Hell. No rhyme or reason. I have heard the great gospel of the infernal song. The gentle braying of the piper’s call has guided me to the church. Where I sit and await the word of the only one God who matters, the only one who will listen. 

I sit surrounded by myself, all of us sitting quietly and patiently. Some in acceptance, others in fear. Others are fresh upon this journey. But I stare at the podium. Waiting anxiously for its form to appear. Dare not speak its name. Do not welcome the gospel of the Black Pharaoh unless you are truly ready. 

There is no returning from the abyss. 

Perhaps that is why they do not enjoy looking upon my twisted shape. My gangly rotten limbs, and distended stomach remind them of the creatures they hide within. Disgusting. Nails long and covered in dirt and blood from the rats and vermin I choose to live off of caress through my matted black hair. Once when I was younger it was blond and beautiful, as I was. I do not blink when bloodshot eyes remain transfixed on a stray beam of late piercing through the makeshift shutters I have fashioned of my bookshelves. A primal fear of it lurks within me, much in the same fashion the average man so fears darkness. Long slender finger, the knots of my bony knuckles show so clearly through my thin near translucent grey skin. Solemnly I reach for the light. Perhaps the hope that this had all been a figment in my mind, a distortion of my own self-image, but as the end of my crooked nail and sickly finger touch the breath of a glimpse of gilded light cursing my room my flesh boils and bubbles. Blistering at the mere touch of light and I recoil once again. 

Arms hug tight, my lanky knees, and I weep. Weep for the life long since lost. The royal I could have been as first born. But instead, I lock myself away from the light, from the family who so vainly cannot stand the sight of me. It is no uncommon thing, to be so cursed in my own head I weep myself to sleep. When I dream, I dream of basking in sunny fields again, letting the warmth soak my skin and feel me with the life I can no longer return to. 

When I wake, lingering in the corner of my blackened room stands the demon of my regret. A blackened formless shape staring forward with nary a feature upon its blurred shape. I do not fear it. I loathe it, and how so it has cursed me. Mocking me from the comfort of my own sanctuary. This demon of Hell, spawn of—or perhaps even—the devil himself. Mocking me, Prince Frederick. The immortal king I should have been. The immortal stain I am instead. It was not until the eve of my brother’s sixty fifth birthday that they had begun to once more paid me mind. For so long I had been the thing of ridicule, the brother and son who had tried to defy the very countenance of God. To seek an end to death was blasphemy, and that I had done so boiled them inside as rays of solar rays did my sickly grey flesh. 

But when my dearest younger brother Roderick turned sixty-five the reality of mortality had struck them, an arrow flung forth at blinding speeds by the bow of time eternal. And so, I languished in the way it bled and dripped at their minds. For fifty years I had been a stain, locking myself away to my room, seemingly they only ever checked on me or held celebration of my birth to reward themselves for not killing me, or to check to see if their eldest sibling had yet passed from this world. Father departed from this Earth for the kingdom of God after the sixty fifth celebration. 

And so the stain was rightful heir, but none wanted to cede to me what was rightfully mine. Unless… they said that a monster as I was, I could not ruler the kingdom and gaze upon my people with the soulless milky eyes of the night. Much as it pains to say, perhaps they were right, and though they spoke to me through sealed wooden door I could practically smell the unholy greed that lingered in their souls. Like poison in the wine that was their divine ichor. Bringing to me the condition, they said they would cede my birthright to me if I shared my secret to life eternal. 

Stupidly I tried in errant panic to warn them of the suffering I still yet endured, fleeting care for my siblings and their children that would soon evaporate in totality. They did not care. Of me they had made their demands, and locked away had I been for so long my thoughts were only fixated on being once more able to frolic freely amid the world outside. Skeletal gaunt rectus that had become of my lips would turn to best its ability a smile at the mere thought. But to subject anyone else to my hubris…  

When they retired for the night I had hoped it meant they would take no for an answer. But every night I was badgers, and every morning I was awoke to pounding on my door. Demanding it of me. I was selfish! They called with blistered tongue, a monster they shouted. Content to watch his family and kingdom rot. 

I wept! I pleaded for them to leave me be! I had been content to be the forgotten joke on their flawless rule. Though relent, they did not. Their fear of realities encroaching entropy was far too powerful, after all they had long been monsters. I was merely the one who looked the part. When one particularly bright morning in a bout of fear I woke to the sound of wood splintering as my chamber door was rent from its hinges to scatter shards of oak across my room. I did all I could to shrink away from the oncoming solar assault as my brother’s, sister’s, mother, and all my nephews and nieces stormed in after. 

They would kill me. Drag me to the light, rip me limb from limb, whatever it took. They wanted to live forever. It is true as ever it had been, that the moral is that mankind is more the monster than any beastly creature of the night that may linger in your nightmares. 

With much hesitance, I relented. 

My mother demanded to be first, I sank my crooked rotten teeth into her throat. And all those in the room were horrified by the sight. I drank with all the greed and selfishness they had accused me of, ripping from her every drop until her flesh was placid grey and gaunt as mine. But she did not fall limp, she did not see the life drain as her veins did. Quite the opposite, for the first time in years, she said, she felt truly alive. And to me… had returned years of abandoned youth. I had refused to do this, to give in to this animalistic urge, and now they had forced my hand. When all was done all forty of those in the room had their turns. By the days end, they had stood at my shoulders, pridefully as though they had said more than fleeting sentences in the past decades. A family with their immortal king, they proclaimed. And now they were no longer so flustered with vanity to not stand at my side. For I had my youth about me, all of us physically in the prime of our lives. 

But the pits of my being had sank so deeply. Though I no longer felt weak and shriveled, my soul felt hollow and empty. I had given them the secret they desired, and unconsciously in doing so the secret to maintaining its exuberance. 

They wasted no time in accommodating themselves. When it had merely been me they insisted that they could do no such thing. That it would be far too costly and ruin the delight of their lives to seal the castle to the sun. But now with great happiness they sealed every window with thick stone by night, and by day they hired laborers to do so while they locked themselves away to the shade. 

It was merely the first step they’d taken towards truly becoming loathsome creatures who deteriorated in my mind to nothing more than animals. Yet for a time, they did not desire to imbibe upon the life of other beings. And content was I to finally play the role of loved brother and king that I did not question it. I, in my grand ignorance, thought all proceeded well in the coming year. My role as benevolent ruler had gone over well, and my family continued to thrive in their hedonistic selfish ways, like pigs content to suckle their nutrients and lay stagnant in the mud. 

A year to the day, they found themselves hungry. Voraciously starving beyond any other feeling they had ever been consumed with. It was all the misery I had tried to warn them of. No matter how much bread our meat they stuffed down sickly maw they found that nothing sated that horrible avarice of their guts. Gluttony, their most lovely of sins, had become useless. They pleaded with me, for they knew how to fix it, to allow them to feed as I had from them. And that I too must have felt the pangs of this ravaging starvation. And, indeed I had. But in my mind causing such suffering to any others… 

They promised to not feed. And in my ignorance I believed them. In place of some grand bloodletting of our people they called for a celebration instead. The return of the long lost brother, the ascent to king. I am not without flaw, I am born of vanity, and the thought to be celebrated after fifty years of isolation had become so enamoring I could not resist. 

Elite from all corners of our kingdom flocked to the castle the night of the celebration. Filling every hall of our home with life and luster that had been vacant from it this year at my insistence. For us, with senses so honed and sharpened it was like sitting in a concert hall. Listening with great interest as a million drums pounded out of rhythm in unison. Horror overcame me as realization settled in, quickly washing to reality when my eldest niece tore, with sharpened talons, into the throat of our distant cousin Amily. She drank from her throat as though the life she’d just snuffed was but another goblet filled with the finest wine. 

In an instant of greed and starvation my family had never known or suffered for in any single moment while they lay on their backs filling their bellies, the legacy of my time as royalty had been set in blood and stone. I had blinked and the entire extended nobility of our kingdom had been run through by the entirety of the unholy union I’d made of my family. I hated that, even I stood there in abject horror, watching as my own body ate itself once more from my choice to not feed—that my belly called to me. Practically it demanded of me to I dulge as my brethren did. I waded through ankle deep puddles of gore, piles of rendered meat and bone that could only scantily have been recognized as human. While my family still ran rabid, chasing down any and all still living vessels for ichor they could track down. I did not know these people. I had not spoken to them but through a thick wooden door for decades and they beguiled me with the idea of the bond of brotherhood. They had pulled the sheep’s wool over my gaze to blind me to the truth that long ago I had accepted as fact of my royal family. 

Monsters. 

Always had they been carnivorous hedonites with little regard their fellow man, but never before had I ever the belief that it would ever come to this. I could still hear screams of terror and suffering from the other side of the castle. But in moments, they had been all but silenced. Replaced by the musical cacophony of my family’s sickening cackles as they danced among the blood of things they had so readily decried as their lesser. 

For weeks… for weeks they beg of me to eat. To feed as they had done, to return the life to my eyes that had once been there. In such short time without having blasphemed of my soul further, I had reached my twisted broken shape that had been restored upon gifting the royal court the removal of their masks. Soon, I could hear them whisper. Conspiring plots to take the throne from my hands and create a rule of blood. Treason. The least of their crimes, but what is telling is that they called me weak. They had never thought much of me. Not even before I’d ripped the soul from my body. 

But weak I am not. I let them feed, fill their fat bellies one last time. An abhorrent sight to behold, gilded cups filled to overflow with the blood of infants. Rows of teeth soaked with subjects who’d served them so loyally. Gleefully squeezing and drinking straight from the bleeding hearts that once had swelled only with love for their royals. 

It must have soured their appetites, to see me smile while my features were so gaunt and rotten. The looks I’d received in those few fettered seconds while I raised aloft my goblet in celebration. It was the occasion of the gala of blood was it not? The supposed true purpose of this sickly feast of gore and blood? 

It was in that moment a hush fell over the whole of the banquet hall. No more clanking of glasses, scrambling of cutlery against metal plates. All eyes were on their king, waiting with baited breath for all I had to say to honor these people who understand disgusted me so much that I refused to imbibe as they did. 

Glass raised, skeletal smile bright and wide. 

“I hope you all burn in Hell.” 

On the signal of my free hand, I motioned to those who remained loyal to me, seeing my denial of the animalistic ways of my family. Curtains swept on the wind and to the ground, exposing the banquet hall to the outdoor light that I had been denied for so long. It swelled over us in blistering light, I could hear the sound of our flesh sizzling and cooking. Ungodly howls of pain and misery fill the halls again as the light had. But instead of disgust I feel nothing but content as I burn. A smile remains plastered across my features as blistering becomes a holy cleansing flame.  

I was a monster; I am a monster.  

I sold my soul for the promise of forever, and so I paid the price thrice fold, tormenting life for decades. All that suffering for my choices… it had almost made all of that miserable existence worthwhile to watch the truer monsters burn.