Paranormal Research Club Ch. 03

The air was instantly thick with the toxic, acidic, choking stench of burning brimstone. Sarah was entirely blocking the only opening out of the small tomb. She looked above herself and screamed in abject terror as she leaped down into the chamber. She knocked me over, and together we fell into a pile of the moldering skeletal remains that scattered and crumbled like rotting twigs beneath our combined weight. It sounded like utter pandemonium up there, but I could see nothing. The dim yellow electric light that had illuminated the room had gone out entirely, and my flashlight had been knocked from my hand and now illuminated nothing but crumbling bones and part of a filthy stone wall. In my efforts to lead the way and place myself in the most frightening and uncomfortable position, I had paradoxically placed myself in the place furthest from danger. Uttering the foulest curses imaginable, I scrambled to my feet as I fumbled for my flashlight. Leaping past Sarah, I lunged into the basement with a savage war cry. I was ready to defend my friends against whatever threat they were facing, even if it meant fighting to my last drop of blood.

I felt my heart freeze in my chest as I beheld the dark shape that was illuminated within the dim, trembling beam of Diana's flashlight. It was a blasphemous embodiment of horror and living darkness such as I had never imagined could be allowed to exist in this world. The hulking, grotesquely deformed beast was roughly humanoid in shape. Bloody strips of rotting flesh hung in dripping tendrils from the long, elk-like antlers that thrust outward from the beast's gigantic, malformed skull. Its emaciated and desiccated flesh was as dark as living shadow pulled taut upon its starved and skeletal frame. The aberration's gluttonous maw was hideously lipless as it gaped wide at us, revealing decaying rows of long, jagged, carnivorous teeth and an oversized tongue that had been gnawed and shredded into inflamed and purulent rag-like strips of fibrous, putrefying flesh.

By far the most horrifying aspects of the beast were its eyes. Elongated into curved and misshapen slits, the eyes wordlessly spoke of unimaginable hatred, implacable cruelty, and timeless evil. And they also spoke of something else: a gluttonous, covetous need for something- something the nature of which I dared not even guess. Those eyes would have been like those of no living creature even if they had not been glowing malevolently in the dark room like coals ripped from the very pits of Hell.

Diana had placed herself between her friends and the monster. She was crouched into a low fighting stance, her eyes narrowed ferociously and her mouth curled into a vicious, wolf-like snarl. She held her flashlight clutched tightly in one trembling hand, and a small folding knife held blade-downward in the other. "I'll hold it off," I heard Diana growl to her friends. "The rest of you get the fuck out of here!"

I could hear Erin praying rapidly in the words of Psalm 68. "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered! Let them also that hate him flee before him..."

The rest of the girls behind Diana ignored her order as they stood frozen in mindless terror. I could not blame them. Brave men have been reduced to gibbering lunatics by lesser horrors than that which stood before us now.

"Goddamnit, I said run!" Diana bellowed, her voice tight with terror as she slowly retreated, keeping herself between the beast and her friends.

Slowly, the trunks of the aberration's massive legs moved as it advanced towards Diana, gloating hungrily over its prize. The beast was in no hurry, and seemed to be feeding from the fear that it knew it could instill. It growled deeply, filling the air with a disgusting and horrifying sound that seemed to shake the very walls. My beautiful best friend did not even flinch as she stood courageously between the beast and her companions, her knuckles white as they clutched her tiny pocketknife. As the monster advanced towards Diana, I knew that there was little chance of her surviving a fight against this monstrous beast. But she was willing to sacrifice herself to give the rest of us a chance, and I could not let that happen while I still drew breath.

Erin's voice rose feverishly, her words reverberating from the stone walls of the tomb. "...as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God!"

My blood felt like it was boiling in my veins. Too many people I have cared about have been killed before my eyes already, and either I would send this blasphemous aberration back to the flaming pits that spawned it or I would die in the attempt. "Diana, you and these girls need to get the fuck out of here! Now!" I roared savagely as I leapt between her and the beast. I have seldom used that voice to give orders before, but I have never had them disobeyed when I did. I didn't take my eye off of my enemy to see whether or not the ladies were doing as I had asked.

In a single blur of motion born from decades of intense martial arts practice, I whipped the large tactical lock-blade knife from my pocket and flicked it open even as I skipped towards the creature. With an unearthly, hair-raising war-cry, I launched a powerful side-kick towards where I judged that its solar plexus would be, and in the same movement I lashed out with my knife in a vicious, snakelike feint-and-stab combination with which I intended to brutally tear through the creature's left lung and aorta. I am an accomplished martial artist, and I know from experience that the kick would have been more than sufficient to splinter concrete, and the scalpel-sharp five-inch blade of my knife is even deadlier.

Even as I attacked the horror, I realized the futility of my actions. My foot met with no resistance at all as it tore impotently through the creature, feeling nothing but an impossible, frostbite-inducing cold that froze my leg with incapacitating agony as my foot plunged through nothingness. My razor-sharp blade, however, felt as though it were ripping through an ooze of slimy and gelatinous flesh embedded with brittle rib bones that crumbled before it like chalk. I saw purulent, coagulated yellow ochre bubble and gush from the horrific wound that I inflicted in the beast's chest. The arrogance in the beast's eyes was immediately replaced with horror and agony as it responded to being stabbed; clearly it had never had cause to fear mortal weapons before today.

The lack of resistance to my ineffectual kick already had me terribly off balance when a clawed fist slammed into my gut with the force of a wrecking ball. Despite the crushing pain of the powerful blow, the greatest source of agony for me was the unbearable cold that seemed to suck every ounce of warmth from my body through the place where the monster's fist struck me. I never saw the blow coming in the darkness, and I could not even partially block or deflect it. My blood roared in my ears as I was torn from my feet like a paper toy and slammed hard into a cold stone wall with such force that the air was crushed from my lungs. My knife kicked up a shower of orange and yellow sparks as the blade struck forcefully against the wall. My only weapon spun uselessly from my hand and was lost in the darkness. I tried desperately to cling to consciousness as I slumped like a rag doll to the cold, damp stones of the floor.

I was back in the familiar clearing in the woods, but now it was occupied only by myself and the now-familiar figure in his purple robe, relaxing in his wooden throne and looking at me with merry amusement. "Well done, young man! I haven't been so pleased with a mortal in ages; you couldn't possibly understand how much good you have just done for me and for your whole little world, my young friend! Oh, I'm sure you have figured out by now that you're unconscious back in your own reality. Don't worry; you will wake up in just a few minutes, and I can promise you that your friends are all quite safe."

"How the FUCK are they safe in a room with THAT damned thing?" I roared furiously. My hands trembled with rage. My face was flushed, my breathing was deep and rapid, and my heart was pounding within my chest like a powerful steam engine. My adrenal medulla continued to pump a river of epinephrine and norepinephrine through my veins and arteries as my sympathetic nervous system continued to respond to a brief but savage battle that had already ended. I was in still very much in fear for the lives of those that I loved, and enraged that the man before me didn't seem concerned by this.

Acratophorus took a long, slow sip of dark wine from a goblet of heavy, ornately carved silver. Then he smiled at me with maddening patience and a confident expression that, to put it very mildly, completely failed to reflect the level of gravity that I felt was warranted. I noticed, however, that his eyes did not mirror his smile. For God's sake, my friends were trapped in a basement with a demon, and he looked like he thought this was a goddamned social event!

Acratophorus spoke, his voice deep and even. "First of all, I would like to caution you against ever taking that sort of tone with any god, mortal. I like you, and I'm famously good-natured, but some of my fellows aren't so tolerant of lapses in good judgment. Oh, it's OK. I'm not angry. But watch yourself. Now, as far as your friends are concerned, don't worry. As I have already told you, they are completely safe. Between the enchantments I put on your knife, Erin's prayers, and that nifty little technique you used, the monster was dissipating into nothingness even before you were entirely unconscious! I'm not going to start killing evil spirits on my own and risk provoking a wider conflict, but there's no reason that I can't put a special blessing on a friend's knife." He winked at me and chuckled as though he thought that the two of us had just conspired to play a hilarious practical joke on someone that neither of us liked. "By the way, you're the first mortal I've seen using an enchanted blade to kill a beast like that in quite some time! Even with a magical blade, most mortals- well, we don't need to worry about that at this point now, do we? Bravo!"

I started to speak, but Acratophorus excitedly cut me off. "The little adventure you just had caused you and your pretty little cousin to disturb the bones down in the pit, which you otherwise wouldn't have touched out of respect for the dead. Now you'll find my treasure there when you look for it! And since everyone in your expedition has seen what I'm certain that they will regard as very convincing evidence of what you would call 'paranormal activity' occurring within the church, I'm certain that any continuation of tonight's investigation will be entirely unnecessary. They'll want to take you back to the house and make certain that you're all right."

Acratophorus took another sip of wine. "What you destroyed wasn't a demon. Creatures like what you killed are seldom seen these days, but some people on your continent used to refer to them, among other things, as Chenoos, Wendigos, or Giwakwas. Most cultures that have a name for monsters like that call them things that can roughly be translated as 'ice cannibals' or something to that effect. They can take a variety of appearances, but none of them are easily destroyed. Unless, of course, you're using a weapon that has been specially enchanted by a god!" He winked. "Or, in your case, multiple gods. Erin's prayers gave you even more of an edge against the beast than I had anticipated."

I tried to consider what the god had just related to me but my mind was still buzzing with a heady cocktail of fear and rage, and it would still be a few more minutes before I was fully capable of intelligent conversation. "Are those things you just mentioned anything like the Ice Giants from Norse mythology?" I asked, trying to relate the beast I had just killed to something with which I would be familiar. I knew that I had heard the term "Wendigo" in a story by Algernon Blackwood that I had once read, but I knew nothing about the creatures beyond that.

Acratophorus smiled, his displeasure now truly gone and replaced with good-natured amusement. "You mean the Jotnar? No, friend, although I can see why you might get them confused. I've personally known a few Ice Giants in my day. In fact, one of them taught me how to make mead when I was younger. You would have wanted a much bigger knife, I can tell you that much! No, my friend, the particular beast you killed was once a noble, but proud, shaman from a small tribe of American Indians that was massacred by another tribe roughly 5,000 years ago. You've never heard of either tribe. Mad with grief for his slaughtered family, and blaming himself for not being able to save them, the shaman rashly chose to engage in a grisly, unholy ritual in which he sold himself to a demon in exchange for the power to exact revenge for his dead loved ones. He has been trapped in the form in which you saw him ever since. I can assure you that he regretted his decision even before his demonic master forced him to massacre and devour the last of those that had wronged his people. Killing his enemies did nothing to ease his grief for his murdered family. Long after his enemies had gone to their eternal rest in the afterlife, the shaman was forced to exist as a hideous beast that was neither alive nor dead, neither spiritual nor physical. He was a horror and an abomination, even to himself, and doomed to spend eternity unloved and alone. At night, he was forced to rise again, driven by an all-encompassing hunger to prey upon the living even as his loved ones mourned and wept for him in the afterlife. It was a horrifying existence for both the shaman and for those unfortunate enough to encounter him."

I was still trembling at the memory of the ancient horror I had slain, and I shuddered at the thought that it had once been a man. Acratophorus saw my expression and wordlessly offered me his wine goblet, but I felt a bit sick at my stomach from the adrenaline. I held up a hand and shook my head in a polite but silent refusal before the god resumed speaking.

"Long ago, the Mohican Indians that lived in this area realized the danger that the monster posed to their community, and their holiest priests spent months fasting and engaging in in a sacred ritual to consecrate the ground above where the creature hid during the daylight, in order to prevent the beast from rising at night. After the ritual was complete, the beast did not rise to trouble them again. Even so, it was still there, imprisoned just beneath the sacred ground and sleeplessly waiting to be released. When the French moved into the area, they built the church on this site when the local Mohican and Massachusett Indians insisted that it was important that they keep the land sacred. This effectively kept the beast trapped beneath the church in the same location where he had been entombed for millennia. Years later, other Christian priests took advantage of the monster's presence when choosing a location to hide my treasure from the world."

"Your heroics did not simply protect yourself and your friends while doing me- and perhaps the whole of your species- an immense favor. A favor for which I promise to richly reward you, I might add. You have freed the old shaman from thousands of years of a wretched and horrifying existence. And in doing that, you also freed other spirits that the unholy presence of the beast had kept trapped in this world with him, unable to enter the afterlife prepared for them."

I spoke with my anger feeling somewhat lessened now that I knew that my loved ones were safe and the terror and excitement of the moment was beginning to pass. "Well, sir, it would have been nice to know about that thing in advance."

Acratophorus sighed sadly and regarded me with a penitent expression on his face. When he spoke, he sounded as though he was attempting to gently and patiently explain a difficult concept to someone that was too young and inexperienced to understand it. "Warning you about what you were going to face ahead of time would have been quite impossible, my young friend. For one thing, you and your cousin wouldn't have fallen on the bones and uncovered my treasure if you had known what was coming. Plus, you have to consider the other implications of my deliberate plotting with you to kill a monster that is bound to a demon. As it is, both of us have plausible explanations for our actions. I blessed a friend's knife because I like you and I knew that you would enjoy owning a magical blade, and you simply acted out of instinct to protect your loved ones. The demon won't be happy that you freed his slave and those who, in turn, his slave had unwittingly kept imprisoned here with his unholy influence. But as it is, the demon and his fellows won't regard our elimination of his servant as justification for a wider and more destructive conflict, and they are very unlikely to risk actively seeking revenge against either of us. If I had warned you about the monster and told you what to do to slay him, then our actions would have been regarded as much more deliberate and premeditated on our part. Oh, yes, they have ways of knowing about such things, mortal. They can read your thoughts just as easily as I can, and that might have led to some very unfortunate consequences for you, which in turn would be unfortunate for me and for many others as well. Look, my young friend, I'm very sorry to have put you and your friends through such a traumatic event, even though I know that both you and Diana have already dealt with far worse in your past. After all, nobody actually died this time, right? Even your enemy was simply liberated from being trapped inside of a monstrosity and given a chance for a normal afterlife if he wants it. If you will provide me with a simple offering, I will have the energy to heal you of the injuries you sustained back in your own reality. It's really the least I can do for you. Please, would you allow me to do that?"

Wandering in from the wood line, I saw two attractive young ladies wearing conservatively cut, very old-fashioned dresses of white linen. They reminded me of some engravings that I had seen at Jamestown. Both of the ladies were very petite, with neither of them being much over five feet tall. Their faces were similar enough that they were almost certainly mother and daughter. One of them was a lithe, almost gangly teenager and the other looked barely old enough to be her mother. They blushed and flashed sweet, embarrassed smiles as they curtsied politely.

Acratophorus bowed towards the two young ladies that had joined us. "These ladies are two of the French settlers that were killed a few years ago at the site of the church. In your world, they're what you would call ghosts. The monster's presence cursed the place where their bones were buried, and they were unable to enter the afterlife until you destroyed it. As a result, they have been haunting the church for quite a long time by human standards. Yes, they're the two 'White Dress Ladies' that your friends knew when they were children. But here, in this reality, they can take physical forms identical to their old bodies. After all, being dead in one reality doesn't make you dead in others. As I've told you before, I made this little reality we're in just for you. You're effectively the reigning deity here. If you want these young ladies to be able to speak fluently in modern English, or yourself to understand their French, just will it and it will happen. Just don't expect your new language skills to work back in the world you're used to. You'll always be able to access this place in your dreams if you want, and as I saw you accomplish with that pretty little stream and the cabin, you can build onto it all that you like."