All around Rosario, the peasant men stood frozen as though they were statues, eyes on the djinni. Clenching his jaw, he staggered forward a step, inadvertently brushing against one of the men. The man instantly spilled to his knees in supplication, droning, “I adore thee, oh my lord!” in such rapid succession that the words were hardly perceptible.
Scowling with rage at this irreverence, Rosario let fly an uppercut swing with his hook. The metal flashed in the dim candlelight and caught the man in the crook of his lower mandible. The man did not so much as scream, so overawed was he by the djinni.
Rosario raised his arm aloft, lifting the man fully erect, looking like a fisherman with a prize catch. Then he tore his dagger out of his belt with his opposite hand and plunged it into the side of the man’s neck between the skull and the shoulders. The skin at the peasant’s neck pulled apart, opening his throat as though his shoulders were yawning wide, until at last the weight of his collapsing body snapped his head off his neck. The body slumped to its knees and spilled headlong, gushing blood in spurts from its severed arteries.
Something like a sigh came from the djinni. Then it said, “Man is a foolish child who calls many things gods. Man knows not the gods.”
Its skin seemed to dull, losing some of the magnificent radiance it exuded, and I found that I was no longer overawed in its presence. Rosario helped me to my feet and together we addressed the djinni. The remaining three peasants all were unconscious, seemingly asleep on the floor.
“In the name of the most high, I command you to speak your name, djinni!” I yelled, thinking it could be cowed in the same manner as a demon might.
The djinni’s eyes widened. If it had eyebrows, they would surely have bobbed at my effrontery. Its eyes narrowed into angry slits that contained all the deadly chill of a winter snowstorm. “Hadst thou instead come to visit me, I would have attended thee in the manner befitting of a guest. I would have filled thy mouth with rotten pus until thy belly were full. Thou wouldst have told me a great many wondrous things of thy life, and I, having learned such, would have sent thee home with an anus so full of scorpions the trail of blood behind thee would stretch for miles.”
The images each word represented, along with the concepts and sensations those phrases conveyed, flashed in my mind as the djinni spoke. They are as vivid now as then—by God, I still taste the pus! These images are always in the forefront of my mind, constantly playing out before my eyes, and it is hard to focus on anything else except through purposeful concentration.
“Wherefore hast thou brought me here?” it asked.
Seeing how my last attempt at communication had failed, I bowed my head and spoke in lowered tones. “Djinni, we have called you to ask a favor.”
“Indeed,” it cut me short, “it is always so when mortals call upon the djinn. Impudent humans! What boon seeketh ye? Be it pleasure? I shall show ye such pain that the greatest pleasure would be anticipating its end! I ask again: wherefore disturbest me thou?”
It was then I explained we sought to spare your daughter from the ailment that would surely take her, and requested the djinni’s succor.
The djinni sighed, if otherworldly beings can be said to sigh. “Alas, thy mortality is a concept thy limited intellect can only dimly grasp.” It looked down at the floor as it considered this, then raised its gaze to make eye contact with me. “What wouldst thou have me do? The child is already dead.”
An image of her flashed in my mind’s eye. I was there, in the room with Bernadette as she languished in her bed, delirious with fever. The eyes I saw her with were not my physical eyes, as they saw more than human eyes could ever hope to detect. Bernadette’s body was like a red-hot fireplace poker, glowing orange from her core. The glow collapsed on itself, giving way to lifeless, cold black, shriveling into her center like a bonfire shrunk to embers. I knew she was dead when the light faltered and snuffed out, leaving nothing but a dreadful stillness in its passing.
Brother, do not think for a moment that so terse an account of your daughter’s death should mean I was hard-hearted about the matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. She was my niece, and—by God!—my only living relative; that is, save for you of course, if ever you should return to read this.
Her passing crushed me. It opened wounds in me, wounds that weep much as my eyes might weep. And while time has dried my tears, it has done nothing to soothe the ache of missing her.
I was flashed back to my study with the djinni standing before me. The realization that Bernadette was dead weighted my body; I crumpled to my knees and collapsed to all fours.
All of this, for naught! Frustration churned the searing bile in my stomach. “You must be able to do something,” I pleaded.
The djinni cocked its head to one side. “Thou hast misunderstood. I can do a great many things.”
“You could not save her!”
“Thou didst not ask.”
My mouth went dry on realizing it was right—I had not asked it to save her from the disease. “Save her!” I blurted, figuring this was as good a time to ask as any.
“I cannot. She has died.”
I plunged my fingers into my hair and clawed at my scalp. “Quit speaking in circles!”
“I speak as plainly as I can. Ye men possess little aptitude for understanding.”
“If you cannot save her, then …” I stammered. At the time, I did not know why I had broken off; I was only aware that I had stopped mid-sentence. I had found that strange, especially since I had already deliberated on what it was I wanted to say before saying it. In retrospect, I think I know what halted my tongue—some combination of my conscience and divine intervention giving me one last chance before I could commit a heinous sin.
“Then … bring her back,” I finished my sentence.
“It is already done.”
I blinked, and then again, looking upon the djinni in mute shock as its words sank into my mind. Was Bernadette alive? When had she been brought back—when I asked, or sometime prior? Had she even died? It was not lost on me that the djinni could be lying, but before I could ask any questions, it said, “Thy niece lies upon her deathbed. Lay her body down in this circle before moonrise tomorrow night, and thou shall have what thou seeketh.”
A thought occurred to me then that I wanted to give voice to, but I stopped myself. To even reflect upon it sent shivers down my spine. What might the djinni want of me in exchange?
As if it had sensed my thoughts, the djinni said, “Thou wonderest what thou must offer to uphold the bargain. Rest assured, human, thy debt is paid in advance.”
I was about to ask what it meant, but suddenly I felt compelled to look over my shoulder. Behind and to one side of me was Rosario, standing rigidly at attention with his arms straight and shoulders squared. His eyes were locked on the djinni. Then, as if in a daze, his neck swiveled slowly to face me. His eyes never moved in his skull; they stared forward at nothing in particular as though they were fixed in place with carpenter’s nails. I returned his gaze, looking him in the eyes, those empty, glassy eyes that saw for miles and sweeping miles and yet saw nothing.
His mouth popped open with the tiniest exhalation, then hung open as his jaw dropped as wide as it would go. He stuck out his tongue—I almost laughed at how out of place this was. And then he threaded the point of his hook through his tongue like a fisherman baiting a fishhook.
I screamed and toppled over onto my backside, wanting to shield my face from the horrible vision playing out before me, and yet I could not turn away, I could not close my eyes.
Rosario rotated the hook so that it was point-up. His head rocked one way, then the other, as though he were admiring the pulpy red muscle at the end of his hook. Then, like a man giving a mighty yawn, he pressed both arms to his chest and stretched them out in a wide arc. The tongue stretched, then tore, then came right out of his mouth in a fan of spurting blood. More blood churned out from between his lips, drenching his neck, soaking into his tunic. Rosario w
as oblivious to it all, a sleepwalker trapped in an inside-out nightmare.
I wish I could say that was where the carnage ended.
Next, Rosario raised his hook to eye-level. He brought it in close to inspect it, and on noticing it was covered in his blood, he dutifully buffed it to a gleam. Once it was shiny again, he raised it to his eyes, as if to admire his reflection in it.
Then his eyes shifted, and his gaze was upon me. He was smiling—smiling! Never, for as long as I have known Rosario, had I seen him smile, and I had thought him incapable of it. But now his mouth was open in a wide grin befitting of a madman. When his lips pulled back, what looked like a quart of blood spilled out from between his teeth.
And then he spoke to me. His lips did not move, but I heard his voice in my mind. I heard him clearly, despite his lack of a tongue. Uncharacteristically cheerful, he said, “Tomás, my friend! I will say nothing of this night!”
My gorge rose when I sensed what he was about to do. “No, please don’t …” the words left my throat as feeble whispers.
“And that is because …” he went on, smiling like a loon, “I saw nothing!”
His right arm swept across his chest from right to left as though he were performing the most vehement sign of the cross in history. Then the arm came back across, leading with the elbow folding as the hook flashed in the dying candlelight. He buried the hook point-first in his temple. As it raked across his face, the hook sent airborne both his eyes and the bridge of his nose, cutting a rectangular swathe into the front of his skull. His brains became unanchored from within his head and they sluiced down into the window he had just cut, stopping only where the organ was too big to pass any further. Then his body went slack and he pitched forward, landing on where his face would have been. His brains hit the floorboards and burst in a muffled splatter of blood.
I screamed.
I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
I could do nothing else.
The candles all went out at once, flooding my study in darkness. I did not awaken until the morning light that entered my window shutters was too bright to be ignored.
The djinni was gone, leaving behind only the lingering scent of burnt cedar. The fissure in the ground was gone too.
As my groggy mind struggled through the haze of restless sleep, a realization struck me just then. I lay in a room with an occult sigil drawn on the ground—enough evidence to get me excommunicated—and five dead men fanned out around me—proof enough to get my neck stretched by an executioner’s rope. But with the dawning of this knowledge came a single-mindedness of purpose: I had risked so much for Bernadette that it would be senseless to give up now.
Rushing downstairs and out the door, I went to the parish rectory across the footpath from my front stoop. The two novitiates seated at the table eating breakfast were put off at my sudden appearance. Before the first could even say, “Good morning, Father,” I ordered them to retrieve Bernadette’s body and bring it to my home. Their faces went milk-white in alarm.
“Go! Do it now!” I urged them, and like stubborn mares goaded into action, they got up from their seats and set off running in the direction of the nunnery.
I cloistered myself in my study to await the return of my novitiates. Sitting in the rear corner with my knees hunched to my chest, I gazed upon the carnage wrought the night previous. I was as good as dead—the sheriffs would be coming for me soon, and there would be no explaining my way out of this. I nearly leapt out of my skin at the sound of an urgent knock at the door.
They’re here! I now recall thinking, believing the sheriffs had arrived. I shook these paranoid thoughts from my head and peered out my second-story window. Down below in the street were my novitiates with a wheeled cart, within which lay your daughter’s remains.
“Take her upstairs,” I said to them from the window.
I could hear their heavy footfalls coming up the staircase. I timed their steps, waiting until they had nearly reached the second floor before cracking the door to my study open just a sliver. The novitiates carried her by the arms and ankles. Judging by how supple her body still was, rigor mortis was yet to set in.
“Leave her on the floor by the stairs,” I said.
The lead novitiate’s face wrinkled in concern. “But Father …”
“Do as I say!” I roared, pressing my face to the gap the door. They set her down, and I added, “Now leave, and do not disturb me!”
I slammed the door to my study to emphasize that would be the final word. Then I pressed my ear to the door and listened. The novitiates’ footfalls grew quieter as they tramped down the stairs and to my front door. I listened as the door to the street creaked open and shut. To make absolutely certain they had left, I peeked out my window to watch them amble down the path back to the rectory and their already-cold breakfasts.
Once I had convinced myself that I was alone in the house, I pulled open the door to my study. Bernadette lay on the ground, looking more asleep than dead. The novitiates had had the tact to set her down in a tasteful position—legs straight, arms folded on her breast.
I hooked my arms beneath her armpits and dragged her to the circle as the djinni had instructed. Nothing. The thought occurred to me that perhaps I had forgotten something, but as I took stock of last night’s events, I became more certain that I had done all that was asked. There was, after all, only one instruction: bring her to the circle before moonrise. I had accomplished that with time to spare.
I waited for a quarter hour, and nothing happened. Bernadette was still quite deceased, djinni’s promise to the contrary notwithstanding. That was when I suspected something must not be right.
The circle of candles had gone inert—that had to be the reason nothing was happening. Whatever sorcery had brought forth the djinni had since faded. Therefore, in order to call that sorcery back into my service, I would have to repeat the ritual that summoned the djinni.
Working quickly, I removed the spent candles and replaced them with new ones, being ever so careful as to place them in the exact same spot as their predecessors. I prepared another mixture of dry ingredients—we had made sure to gather more than enough. Once everything was set, I lit the candles, burnt the mixture, and said the words.
This time, there was no earthquake, no pillar of smoke and fire. Instead, Bernadette leapt and jerked in the circle, her body wracked by violent convulsions. Her spine arched backward at a steep angle as her hands groped and punched at the air. I watched, horrified, as she thrashed her legs, spilling the candles into the air. Her foot crashed into the bowl of smoldering ingredients and sent it flying, scattering burning ash to all points on the compass. The fire caught on my bookshelf of occult “trophies,” spreading quickly to the thatch roof. In an instant, my house was ablaze. My stunned gaze swept from Bernadette to the bookshelf to the flames to Bernadette again, and I saw that her body was still.
Had the ritual worked? There was no way to tell. She lay motionless and completely unaware of the peril that surrounded us. I knelt beside her and sat her up, then cradled her like a bride being carried across the threshold. I was about to stand with her in my arms when I felt her breath on my cheek.
She lived! She lived, and she was rousing as if from a nightmare.
I set her back down, this time face to face before me. I shouted her name, she didn’t respond. Her head lolled drunkenly from one shoulder to the other. I shook her, repeating her name. Her eyes opened. They danced in their sockets, looking all about but at nothing in particular. I slapped her hard across the face, and she stirred, her eyes taking on a keenness that had been absent until now.
She looked at me, and my blood ran cold. Her eyes were no longer those of a fifteen year old girl. They belonged to a predator. Those eyes spoke volumes. In them was a primeval savagery, one that demanded to hunt and that would never be sated.
Bernadette leapt from the balls of her feet and pounced, knocking me onto my back with her sitting atop me. Her hands clawed at my eyes,
flailing like a mountain lion subduing its kill. I crossed my arms before my face in a feeble attempt to shield myself.
Not one to be deterred, she dove with her jaws splayed wide, her teeth aimed for my throat. I shifted away at the last minute, and her mouth clamped down on my ear instead. She reared her head back and her whole body followed. Blood traced a solid arc in the air from my head to the ear in her teeth. In the same movement she knocked her head back and swallowed my ear whole.
In a blind panic I managed to get my hand around the mixing bowl, and swung for her head as she rushed in for another bite. The bowl hit her temple—it was cast-iron. I fully expected her skull to shatter under the force of the blow. Instead she rolled off me and recovered, landing on all fours and snarling like a wild animal, looking none the worse for wear.
The house shuddered, threatening imminent collapse. Bernadette, sensing this, leapt from all fours out the window and landed on the ground below like a housecat. I ran to the windowsill to watch her, too stunned was I by what I had seen to do anything else. Running on twos and occasionally on fours, Bernadette sprinted up the path at beastly speed. She did not break stride when she got to the churchyard wall—which is easily as high as a man is tall—and vaulted over, disappearing behind it into the streets of Barcelona.
The following days were a blur of activity. I hardly remember them except in snippets. The fire destroyed my home and, thankfully, any evidence that would conclusively brand me a murderer. Still, I was hard-pressed to explain why five adult skeletons were discovered in the rubble. Even harder to account for was why the skeleton of my deacon, Rosario, was among them. His remains were easy enough to identify—the hook-hand was a giveaway.
There being insufficient evidence to send me to the gaol, I was exonerated in the court of secular justice. Even so, the whole affair sat poorly with my superiors in the Church, who—without saying so—had begun to suspect that I was an occultist. Here too, they lacked evidence to proceed against me formally, but they did not let that stop them. I was neither excommunicated nor defrocked, but it was clear I was being punished when orders came from Rome that I should be relieved of my post as pastor. Without so much as a day to pack my things, I was carted off to this faraway monastery in Castile, from which I write you today. And while I am treated well enough, there exists an unspoken truth between the brothers and me, that never again shall I set foot outside the monastery grounds.
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 3 Page 16
