Paranormal Research Club Ch. 04

Erin was right. A week ago, it hadn't even occurred to me that Heather was really a woman with a woman's needs and desires. Now we were talking about having children together and living as a husband and wife as though it were the most normal thing in the world. I didn't answer Erin, but my hesitation told her everything she needed to know.

"I know that you and Kim have always been close, but what you just did isn't something that either of you would have even considered a week ago, and you know it! Maybe I can see you and Diana getting together, but you wouldn't have done it with a room full of people watching! I hate to say it, but I'm not really surprised that Sarah managed to seduce you. She's always been a bit wild, and it's obvious that she has a crush on you. But something unnatural is going on here. When my Dad gets home, which should be any time now, you really need to talk to him about everything that's happened today. I really think that my Dad will be able to help you figure out what's happening and how to best handle it."

Exhausted after the day's events, I flopped back onto the couch and shut my eyes. "What will he be able to help me with? Reading the Pentateuch in ancient Hebrew?" I asked with a yawn. "I thought that we were here because there were supernatural events going on that he couldn't handle by himself."

Erin sounded annoyed when she responded. "We're not here because of anything he couldn't handle. He just wanted an objective outsider to document what we were all seeing. There's a lot about my Dad that you don't know, and I really suspect that there's a lot more to this situation than he's been able to tell us," Erin replied cryptically. "Seriously, John. We've known each other for a long time. I've never given you stupid advice before, and I'm not going to start now. You need to talk to my Dad about what's going on as soon as you can! Promise me that you'll talk to him."

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and released it as a long-suffering sigh as I ran a hand backwards through my hair. I suspected that her father would probably give me some trite, predictable, party-line church advice that would be of little use or relevance, but I supposed that listening to him probably wouldn't kill me and it would make Erin happy. What I really needed now was some sleep. "Ok, Erin. But if he's not home soon, I'm going to sleep."

Erin smiled, some of the tension and fear melting from her pretty young face. "Yeah, me too. Just promise me that you'll talk to him in the morning, will you?"

I smiled back at her. "I don't know what time it is, but I'm pretty sure it already is the morning." I didn't feel like checking the wristwatch that I always wore strapped to my belt. "But, yes, I promise that I'll talk to him." I groaned as I slowly sat up and rose to my feet. I was exhausted.

Erin and I hugged good night before she headed off towards her bedroom. She had left a light on for me, but for the most part the house seemed dark and quiet. I had showered earlier that evening, but I wanted another one to clear my head. That, and because pangs of guilt filled my heart every time I thought of my sister's virginal blood smeared along my cock. Certainly what we had done was consensual, but part of me still felt a nagging guilt that I might have taken advantage of her.

I was probably the only one still awake in the house. I didn't want to bother anyone by showering on the first floor right beside the master bedroom, but I remembered Erin mentioning earlier that there was an old shower that they seldom used in the small bathroom down in the basement. Even if there weren't any soap or towels, I would be able to rinse and dry off with my t-shirt, and I could take another full-scale shower the next day. I found the stairs down to the basement behind the kitchen, and flicked on a small light that barely illuminated the bare hard gray concrete steps that led down into darkness.

The air grew progressively colder as I walked down the steps towards the basement. Finding a light switch at the bottom, I flipped it on. Nothing happened. I tried again, thinking that maybe there were fluorescent lights down here with aging ballasts, but room remained dark. I took the flashlight out of my pocket and shone it around the room, and was startled when an indistinct gray figure darted through the periphery of my vision. I whirled towards it, but saw nothing. The beam of my flashlight flickered and dimmed to a dull brown for a long moment before returning to its normal brightness. I shivered in the icy air.

I knew that I was tired and that my mind was likely to be playing tricks on me. I saw a short hallway leading to my right from the basement, and I assumed that the bathroom would have to be down there. As I approached the hallway, the air steadily became colder and a steady breeze was blowing gently towards me. That struck me as unusual, because the hallway should have been a dead end with no air blowing out of it, and I didn't hear an air-conditioner or any other appliances running back there. In fact, the basement was eerily, profoundly silent. I felt as tough I were being watched, but dismissed the feeling.

Suddenly, the silence was broken. "Come closer, child." creaked a deep, hollow, heavily-accented voice from the end of the hallway. The voice sounded mournful in a harsh and cruel sort of way, and the unexpected sound had me crouching into a low fighting stance. I could feel the hair rising on the back of my neck and my heart pounding in my chest. My right hand flashed to my knife.

An ugly, raspy cackle that sounded entirely devoid of happiness answered my gesture. "You aren't going to be able to kill me more than once tonight, child." He spoke slowly, like a very old man speaking an unfamiliar language. "You wouldn't have defeated me even once if I hadn't been starved of nourishment for so many years! It had been close to nineteen years since I had eaten, when a stupid old priest lost his life pursuing the armband you are wearing. Before him, I had starved for centuries. Many times in my youth I feasted upon the flesh of far mightier warriors than you, tearing their strong young bodies to shreds with my claws and teeth and then gnawing upon their slowly rotting bones until another man, woman, or child became lost in the dark forests and swamps of my home at night. But don't be afraid. Those days are over now. Come. Sit. We have much to discuss."

My hand didn't leave the knife. Using my flashlight, I found the light switch at the entrance to the hallway. I flipped it, but nothing happened.

Again, a deep and menacing voice echoed from the hallway. He sounded as though he were becoming impatient with me. "Those things aren't going to work for you, child. We don't need them. Let us talk in the dark. It has been too many years since I have sat in the light. I am more comfortable with the darkness." I had never heard an accent like his before. I had little doubt that I was hearing the voice of a man whose entire tribe had been extinct for over five thousand years.

The metallic click of my blade locking open echoed hollowly in the basement. Again I heard harsh, mocking laughter like dry leaves rustling in a cold wind. A gust of icy wind blew at me from the hallway. Again, my flashlight dimmed and flickered, threatening to leave me engulfed by the inky darkness. In the beam of my flashlight, I could see that the hallway was full of small, cluttered rooms that branched off of it in both directions. Even if my flashlight didn't go dead, it would be very difficult to walk down that hallway, especially alone, without risking ambush from any number of locations. It was impossible to tell where the voice was coming from.

The old maxim 'when in doubt, get the fuck out" came to mind. I could shower later. I scanned the room I was in and began slowly backing towards the stairs, focusing my attention on the entrance to the hallway but carefully scanning in all directions. Glancing at the stairway that constituted the only exit from the basement, I froze.

Squatting on the bottom step was the gaunt figure of an ancient man wrapped in layered robes of well-worn leather and animal skins. His mouth was twisted into a joyless, almost toothless smile that he probably intended to be friendly, and his dark, haunted eyes gleamed like polished obsidian from deep within the wrinkled flesh of his sunken eye sockets. The loose, age-spotted, leathery skin of his weathered, wizened face was shrunken with great age about his skull. What had perhaps once been intricate tattoos on his face and arms were faded and blurred with time, and were now almost lost in the maze of wrinkles that creased his loose skin. The septum of his hooked nose was pierced with a crescent-shaped bone ornament. His hair had been plucked out aside from a hoary burst of it that protruded from the top of his head. A necklace made from small white beads, bear claws, and an intricately carved shell ornament rattled about his neck as he slowly stood. Leaning on a flint-tipped spear like a staff, he limped slowly and laboriously towards me on reed-like legs encased in loose-fitting fur leggings. Full pouches rattled and bounced with his movements from a wide belt of pale deerskin leather that he wore. He stopped an arm's length away from me and looked me in the eye. Even bent under the weight of his incalculable age, he was well over six feet tall. In his prime he would have been an impressive man indeed.

If he wanted to talk, then there was no reason for me to attack him. Acratophorus had told me that, if this man truly were the shaman that I had met under less friendly circumstances earlier, he would help me. I lowered my knife, but kept it in my hand. He looked harmless enough, but there was no sense in being careless.

He spoke, his voice as harsh as a crow's. His accent was thick, but he spoke slowly, clearly, and carefully. "I am Skagematuck, a mighty warrior and the Great Shaman and Prophet to my people. I was asked by that drunkard of a god Acratophorus to watch over you. I have chosen to postpone my eternal happiness with my ancestors as well as to risk returning to eternal slavery to the darkness in order to help keep you and your loved ones safe, because I am an honorable man."

I nodded, keeping an eye on him. "I'm grateful for that, but what exactly are you trying to keep us safe from? No offense, but so far the only thing we've needed protection from has been you."

For a long moment, he silently glared at me as though I had offended him with unforgivable ignorance. "Child, can you not see that you are wearing a sacred relic that is powerful enough to unmake the world, and carrying an enchanted blade that is mighty enough to kill a small deity? Do you think that you are only here to play like a buck in the Fall, who ruts with every doe in the forest until the hunter takes him? Are you too blind to notice that there are powers at work here far greater than yourself? The amount of spiritual energy that you have generated for Acratophorus in the last few hours has been enough that there is hardly a demon or deity in existence that could help but to notice it. And, you must believe me child, being noticed by gods and devils is seldom good for any mortal." He gestured with the butt of his spear to the bottom of the stairs.

I slowly folded my knife and slipped it back into my pocket. Without taking my eyes off of Skagematuck, I took a seat on the stairs where he had indicated. "So, is it fair to say that I'm being hunted by demons and evil gods that are upset by what's going on?"

Skagematuck looked deeply frustrated. He took a deep breath before he answered evenly. "You are currently in little danger from demons. Few demons would risk entering Father David's house and inciting the wrath of his great Abrahamic God. Not to mention, despite your stupid behavior, you genuinely love others and you are deeply loved, both by mortals and some gods. Love and good-will can be powerful shields against truly evil spirits. Demons crave fear, anger, and hatred just as mortals desire food and drink. Love and light are to them like smoke and dust to the eyes. But you must remember that many spirits are neither entirely good nor entirely evil, and just because a god or goddess is not evil does not mean that they wish you well. The spiritual energy you are producing for Acratophorus will likely prove very enticing to any number of beings that you would do well to avoid. Some of them may wish to test the defenses that Acratophorus and your own Abrahamic God have constructed around you, even if only for their own entertainment. During these times, you must not underestimate the power of Cherise and Rachelle's prayers, or those of your friend, Erin. I would pray for your safety as well, but I abandoned my own gods many years ago when I chose to walk a very dark and crooked path. I fear that my wicked deeds have left the ears of my gods deaf to my prayers."

The old man's lips tightened and his eyes narrowed as though trying to cover an unfathomable inner sadness with feigned anger. But, at that moment, it was as though I could see deeply into his soul, and the dark abyss of suffering, misery, horror and despair within his frozen heart threatened to engulf me as well.

For ages, he had been forced to exist as a vile creature, deprived of his very humanity and despised by all of mankind, hated perhaps most of all by himself. For numberless centuries, Skagematuck had lived as a creature of darkness, forced to prey upon innocent human beings and to cause untold suffering in this world. I stood to try to comfort the old man, but he froze me in place with painfully outraged eyes, as though my thoughts had wandered where they never belonged and invaded something deeply personal of his that I had no right to behold.

For a moment that seemed like a lifetime, I felt as though there were an icy wind whistling through my empty heart and leaving me spiritually frozen and devoid of anything good, clean, or pure. I remembered how the touch of the wendigo that the old shaman had once been had frozen me to the bone. The feeling somehow brought to mind the way I had felt in Iraq after the first man that I had killed, and how his horrified face and the faces of the many others that came to join him in death had consistently haunted my dreams since then. Years of therapy at the Veteran's Affairs hospital had helped me more than I had ever expected it to, but what has been done can never be undone.

I imagined what it must have been like for Skagematuck to spend thousands of years stripped of his humanity and living as a hideous monster that existed for the sole purpose of devouring the flesh of innocent human beings. It was a great mercy that the thought was too horrible for me to comprehend, for had my mind been able to encompass the whole of what Skagematuck had experienced, I could have never beheld the warmth of sunlight or held an innocent baby in my arms again. I now knew why he shunned the light.

In Skagematuck's eyes was the horrified, haunted look of a man that the living world would lock away for being a madman. But what he suffered from was the exact polar opposite of being out of touch with reality; his view of reality was far clearer than the frail mortal mind had ever been constructed to withstand. "Foolish child!" He wailed despairingly. "Why is it that you have spirits that have existed for countless years risking eternal damnation for your sake, and yet you fail to see the peril of your own situation? Do you know how slowly the endless hours of eternity pass for those in the shadow? Could you keep your own sanity if you knew of the nameless fear that dwells in the solitude of endless darkness?" He glared at me for a moment, cackling like a lunatic. "You are two-thirds ghost yourself, now that you have eternally bound your soul to those of Rachelle and Cherise. You can see and hear spirits like myself clearly now, because you are now at once both living and dead. Soon, you will know why the living instinctively fear loneliness and darkness! Oh, yes, child, you shall know, and none shall have to explain it to you then! Then you shall see why Cherise, Rachelle, Acratophorus and I fear for you!" He chuckled mirthlessly, his tormented eyes boring into me.

"So..." I began, but even before I could formulate my question Skagematuck interrupted me.

"Your soul is eternally and irrevocably bound to Rachelle and Cherise's. They are inside of you right now, and you are inside of them. You are so close now that you can even share their memories, if you wish. Get used to it, because your souls will always be close together for the rest of eternity. It won't be so bad, young one. They are as both as pure and as sweet as the sunlight, and what they did was motivated by love and genuine concern for your safety. But you must trust me, young one; eternity is a very long time! For that reason, I caused your cousin Heather to fall into a deep sleep until I could talk to you. Like Rachelle and Cherise, Heather is a potential soul-mate to you. If you make love to her in this reality, the love that you feel for one another could easily bond your very souls inseparably together for the rest of eternity. What you have done together in the silly little dream-world that Acratophorus has constructed for you has already come dangerously close to doing precisely that! And eternally bonding two souls together is a powerful act; it is never something to do ignorantly or lightly. Acratophorus seemed to believe that bonding your souls together was a good idea that would strengthen both of you, which is why he orchestrated for your friendship to blossom into full-fledged romantic love so quickly. Yes, child, your love for each other has always been real, but you and she are being manipulated now by outside forces beyond your control! Deities always think that they know best for mortals, and usually they do. But I wanted both of you to have a choice. Do you want her to also have to walk the dark and frightening path that lies before you, and to risk her own destruction? Mortals should always have choices. I wanted you to make the decision with your eyes open and as wisely as one as young as yourself can, fully knowing the consequences of your actions. Your Abrahamic God would agree that you both deserve the right to choose your fate."

He glanced around, his hand near his spear. "I should not stay here any longer, but there is an other deity that you befriended by accident many years ago. It was she who suggested you as a worthy heir to Acratophorus. You must meet her tomorrow, for there are many things that she must tell you."

The shaman continued. "Tell the priest who calls himself Father David that you must go with him tomorrow to see the family of the man who killed himself. Talk to him, child, and earn his friendship. He and his sister will be a powerful allies to you, so long as you can behave yourself around Naomi and Erin! Father David is a good and kind man, but I must warn you that he can be very dangerous if provoked. Acratophorus warned me that Father David will not want to take you with him tomorrow, because he is battling a dangerous demon that has long been tormenting the family of the man who killed himself. In fact, the man who killed himself did so in the mistaken belief that the demon only wanted to destroy him, and that his death would release his family from danger. This is why Father David has been out so late. He will not regard you as properly trained to join him. But above all else, you must not stay here tomorrow for the sake of Naomi and Erin! The armband will affect them more strongly each time they experience its influence until they surrender to their lust, and you must know that Erin already cares deeply for you. If Father David refuses to take you with him tomorrow, Acratophorus suggested that you ask him about the Holy Order of the Knights of Canterbury. If that's not enough to rattle him into letting you join him, perhaps ask him how safe he thinks the Fist of Hahgwehdaetgah, the Spear of Lugh, the Golden Apple of Eris, and the Necklace of Tlazolteotl are if the Armlet of Dionysus has been compromised. Those are four other artifacts that his order still guards in remote places, because they either could not be safely shipped to England or, in the case of Lugh's spear, they are too dangerous to have near large numbers of people in the Tower of London. The very fact that you know of their existence should get his attention." I thought that I heard an insane, mirthless cackle as the ancient shaman gradually dissipated into nothingness.