by Tim Marquitz
Anxiously, I waited for the Mistress to make contact and reassure me she would make good on her promise. But with each passing day—as the certainty of her treachery became evident—my fear and anger mounted.
And guilt was eating me. If I was indeed meant for the chair, then I had banished poor Francine for nothing. I was a selfish fool.
One morning Nurse Andrew asked, “You haven’t heard? Iceman escaped two days ago.”
“What? How?”
“No one knows. He just wasn’t in his bed one morning. They’re launching a full investigation.”
Instantly, I knew the Mistress had been behind it. That bitch! She’d found a better candidate, apparently, then me to help. I swallowed my anger, and said, “Please get me Nurse Tettles. I must speak with her immediately. It’s urgent.”
But it was not until the following morning that she deigned to visit.
“You should not have asked for me. It’ll draw suspicion,” she said.
“You are already making quite a name for yourself,” I said with a mocking grin.
“Just making the most of the pathetic position left me,” she said, not getting my inference to her new nickname. “I don’t much like babysitting you bunch of droolers though. Of course I’ll be running this place soon enough.”
She just might too. It was scary to think of what she might do—perhaps her own little Grand Central Station for body-snatching demons. “Why did you release Iceman before me?”
“An old associate,” she said, with a mischievous grin. “They seem to find their way into places like this—the transition can be…troublesome. But with the investigation underway, you can’t expect—”
“I’ve run out of time. My competency hearing is tomorrow. Then I’d be in state prison until the trial. We do it now. Tonight. Or I’ll implicate you in his escape.”
That caught her off guard.
“You have no proof,” she said, angry.
“Don’t need any. I am a lawyer, remember? And I have nothing to lose. I will at least raise enough stink to torpedo your management bid.”
She considered this for a moment, her lips pursed in a tight straight line. “Ok, tonight, 90 minutes after lights-out. “A deal’s a deal.”
#
Keys rattled in my lock. She came in without turning on the light; she was sucking at a finger. She’d cut herself. “Let’s go.”
We made it through two heavy rolling gates and down the back stairs to a service entrance near the kitchens. She keyed off the alarm and shouldered the door open.
I stood on the threshold and offered my hand. “A deal’s a deal.” I tried to hold her gaze. “My life is in your hands,” I added.
I knew she would call security the moment the door clicked shut behind me. There would be no time to scale the chain-link fence before I was surrounded by an army of baton-whirling security and pummeled into submission.
With my heroic capture, any suspicions of her involvement in Iceman’s escape would be overshadowed. And it would be just the thing to bolster her management bid. She’d already have her story rehearsed: how I had attacked and threatened her, forcing her to open each door.
She hadn’t see the runnel of blood that dripped from my fingers. She pulled away though when she felt the sticky warmth of my hand. But I held on tight.
Making that sharp burr in just the right place on the door handle to cut her had been quite a trick. It took a full day to worry loose two of the four bolts that secured the bed rail. The final two sheared after painstakingly prying the rail back and forth. All this had to be done in those furtive snatches of time when the hall was clear. After striking the handle, I rushed back and took position on the floor beside the bed with the rail beneath me. The noise brought a gaggle of nurses and interns. I explained that I was leaning on the side of the bed when it just fell apart. They were suspicious, of course, but after a long while, and being unable to discover any obvious scheme, they wheeled out by bed and brought in another.
Last night Elwood and I succeeded in contacting each other, and I fell again into his world.
I returned with a golden lock of Francine’s hair. Her essence had been with me all day, lending me her calm warmth. She’d forgiven me.
Now, I felt Francine push through me and back into her body—an instant of golden warmth. A feeling I’ll never forget; the perfect sensation to carry me into eternity. I’ll take my chances on whatever that is. I fully expect to just dissipate into nothingness. But if I do not, if there is anything left of me at all, I will do what I can to help Elwood, the real Robert Iseman, and any others reclaim their corporeal selves.
Francine will adjust well to her new role and status at the Center, I am sure. All she needed was a little respect and a boost in self-confidence. Last night she’d told me she was ready to “take back’ what was hers and set things right.
I’d used up all my chances; it was time to give someone else theirs.
A distant wail of fury heralded me away. The Mistress had found herself in my doomed shell.
We all pay for our errors—one way or another.
For Love
DJ Tyrer
I crept slowly between the tombstones, grateful that the ritual required a gibbous moon as the torch’s beam was narrower than I would’ve liked; the graveyard was treacherous enough by daylight. I knew exactly where I was headed; I’d visited the crypt multiple times as I planned this night and many times before.
The Devereux Crypt had a certain reputation in Tandbury, although that had nothing to do with my nocturnal visit; children would dare one another to slip their fingers through the grating in the crypt wall and risk having them nibbled by the inhabitants of the tomb or the ghoulish horrors said to haunt the churchyard of St. Timothy’s.
I wasn’t here to indulge in such frivolities nor to emulate such horrors’ diet. I was here for one reason and one reason only and that was an intensely personal one. I was here to fulfil the burning ambition that had dominated my every waking moment and my dreams: I was here to find the love of my life and give her life.
Within our ancestral crypt was the body of Marianne Devereux, the sister of my mother’s great-grandfather. Marianne had died back in the nineteenth century but she was more alive to me than anyone around me. The beauty of her portrait had obsessed me since childhood and I’d known we were destined to be lovers; I’d often wondered if I was the reincarnation of her beloved, yet had not yet encountered her in the living flesh, hence my current plans. Having been born so long after her time and having failed to locate her in this age, I was determined to revive her to life so that we could be together. Together forever.
It was only thanks to Granddad Devereux’s interest in the occult that I’d even suspected that such a thought was more than an idle wish. In his books, I’d seen testaments to events we would term supernatural, yet which had occurred; had watched him call up an Elemental spirit to answer his questions, showing that things were truly real. Delving deeper, my suspicions had been confirmed and I became certain that I could revive her if only I could discover the right process. Having inherited his library from his own grandfather, he treated the occult as a plaything. To me it was a science to be understood.
I had sought my grail within the musty pages of tomes regarded as abominable by those too weak to seek the power they contained and, finally, had discovered it. The Gloss of Julius on the Krypticon of Silander had been enigmatically obscure and the Krypticon itself had proven as much a will-o’-the-wisp as the lights that haunted Tandbury. The only volumes bearing the title of Necronomicon that I’d managed to locate had been pale imitations of that genuine book of horrors by Alhazred and the copy of Cultes des Ghoules I managed to locate had been decimated by mold. And, as for The Book of Lost Lore that my grandfather spoke enigmatically of, it proved as lost as the lore it purported to collect. Ironically, it was within a copy of Mysteries of the Worm in which was written her name in flowing calligraphy that I found the answer, in the little-know
n tenth chapter (the famous Saracenic Rituals of the third having proved useless in my endeavors). Discovering what I sought within its blasphemous pages, I spent months studying the specific ritual and preparing to enact it.
A dog, lured from a garden in a distant city, had died to further my plans, but it was a sacrifice I was happy to make. It may seem cruel, but what is a dog compared to the true love of two enlightened souls?
Getting into the crypt was no difficulty: I’d carefully cultivated the friendship of the Vicar since my return to Tandbury and it had been easy to steal the key to the crypt from the Vicarage during a brief visit once I’d learnt where it was kept; I’d persuaded the Vicar to show me inside, claiming I was researching my family history. It’s easy enough to lie convincingly when the lie is close to the truth. The key turned stiffly, but our earlier visit had helped clear the rust. Nobody had been laid to rest in the crypt since the family fortune collapsed nearly a century ago.
The gate moved slowly with an unfortunate creak; I just had to hope nobody heard it and came to investigate. That was the risk I had to take. The short stairway lay before me: the Devereux Crypt was half sunk into the boggy ground of the churchyard. Parts of the Crypt went deeper, but I’d no interest in them as Marianne’s casket—one of the last burials before abandonment—was near to the entrance. Local legend spoke of tunnels running below the village to unfeasible depths and the strange things that lurked within them. Others said there was some sort of treasure hidden within the churchyard, but that, too, held no interest for me; Marianne was the only treasure I desired.
A little gingerly, I descended the brief stairway into the darkness of the tomb. So much planning and dreaming had led up until this point that I felt as if it couldn’t truly be happening, that something must go wrong and deny me my desire. The steps were slick with damp and mold and the air seemed thick with vapor. At the base of the steps, I shrugged off the backpack I carried and leaned it against the wall.
Marianne had been laid to rest in the second chamber on the right. The burial chambers were raised a couple of feet above the floor to protect against the frequent flooding. A metal gate secured the coffin, but was easily unlocked using the key and a bit of muscle power as the lock was rusted and clogged. Naturally, I’d dared not ask the Vicar to open it for me, so had only been able to glance briefly between the bars and note that she’d been interred in a glass-topped coffin; I hadn’t been able to see inside as the glass was frosted with a century of filth. With the gate open, I could lean in and shine the torch onto her through the lid, although I had to pause to wipe it clean.
Marianne’s appearance was, simultaneously, both better and worse than I’d imagined. I’d fully expected her to have decayed away to bone and had half-imagined I might find her perfectly preserved through some secret art of Victorian embalming. She was neither. Marianne was petrified, her parchment-like skin turned a nut-brown color and strained tight against the bones of her skull and hands. Her once gorgeous pale dress was dyed with mottled reddish and brownish shades like the stains left by tea on a paper towel. The pillow on which her head rested and the quilted lining on which she lay were similarly stained and were encrusted with brown in places.
Slowly, carefully, I eased the coffin out of its resting place and lowered it to the floor of the crypt. A two-man job, I couldn’t quite control it and it slipped from my grip to land with a crash that cracked the glass. I offered a silent prayer to the strange gods of such unholy pursuits that the sound had passed unheard.
Although I’d hoped to not damage the casket, out of respect for my ancestors, the cracked glass removed the incentive to worry about it as I gave up on turning the rusted screws holding the glass lid in place. Instead, I just jimmied it up, shattering it into several large pieces and sending flakes of glass skittering across the floor like sparkling snow and others showering down on my beloved’s face.
I’d expected a stench of death when I tore off the glass lid, but, aside from a slight mustiness, it seemed as if the smell of decay had long since dissipated. In fact, the whole scene was surprisingly inoffensive; I was not at all revolted despite my earlier expectations.
I gazed down at my darling Marianne and, even if she looked nothing like the portraits that had obsessed me since childhood, I felt excited to finally have her close. A little uncertainly, kneeling beside the casket, I leant in and brushed her desiccated lips with my own. I hadn’t known what it was like, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was, I guess, much like kissing a piece of old leather. Maybe not pleasant in itself, but not horrible. I dared myself to kiss her again and, this time, pressed my lips firmly against hers, kissing her as one would kiss a lover, whilst running my hand across her body and along the leathery skin of her thighs. For one brief moment, I wondered if it would be so wrong to consummate our love prior to the ritual, but I knew I couldn’t waste my time on such indulgences when it was so short.
Tenderly, lovingly, I raised her body from the casket and laid it upon the floor, thankful that, save for a few strands of stained, formerly flaxen hair and flakes of attached scalp that clung to the pillow, she came out in one piece. I took it as a good sign.
I stepped away from her for a moment to retrieve my backpack, within which were all the accoutrements required for the ritual ahead.
I’d not come here unpracticed in the arts I would use: I saw myself as a student of the occult, an occult scientist, if you would. One sometimes reads of frothing lunatic cultists who blunderingly seek to summon up strange gods or wrest the power of the cosmos. Unlike such madmen, I’d done all that I could to ensure that what I planned would work. I wasn’t going to trust the ramblings of some medieval wizard, even if annotated by my beloved’s hand; I’d made sure they had a basis in fact before coming here. I’d chanted The Canticle of Jenneset until I’d seen the corkscrew towers of the Primal City and had summoned a peculiar Elemental Spirit of fire and ice to test the efficacies of such rituals and bring me the enchanted crystal of which Prinn had written. I’d even tested this very ritual in the basement of my London house, using it to return to life a dog that I’d bludgeoned to death. It worked then and I trusted Prinn’s claim that it would work upon a human. I would’ve preferred to test the ritual on a human corpse before attempting to raise Marianne, but stealing a dog was far less risky than indulging in kidnap and murder.
From my pack, I took a chunk of chalk I’d collected myself on the night of the full moon with the prescribed Chant of Thoth. I used it to mark the pentacle around Marianne and the five elemental symbols that the ritual required. Then, I took out the five candles that would go at the points of the pentacle; I’d cheated a little here—for Prinn required they be made of human body fat—by cultivating a contact in a certain London clinic to supply the blubber removed through liposuction; it had certainly worked on the dog.
I laid the enchanted green-blue crystal upon Marianne’s brow as indicated in the ritual. In her annotations, she’d written that the crystal was “The legendary Tear of Nim through which the Threshold might be crossed.” It was roughly tear-shaped, but, although the name Nim appeared in the chant recorded by Prinn, the meaning of the name was a mystery to me. I wondered if she’d be able to enlighten me once I’d revived her.
Lastly, I produced a shallow metal bowl into which I poured a flask containing a mixture of rock oil and herbal infusions into which I now dropped a few strands of the hair that had been stuck to the pillow. I then pricked my finger and allowed five drops of blood to fall into the mixture before stirring it with a specially-cut willow wand which I then used to anoint the crystal with five drops of the liquid. The drops appeared to be absorbed. Finally, I struck a flint and steel—a lighter or match might have been okay, but I preferred not to risk it—allowing the sparks to fall onto the liquid which burst into a sickly greenish flame.
All the while I was doing this, I was reciting what Prinn referred to in his famed Saracenic Rituals as The Sabaoth of the Genii, a list of Arabic or Hebrew-sounding wo
rds or names that were not to be found in any dictionaries. According to his description, chanting these words helped to ward off the evil spirits that would be attracted to the ritual preparations. In the basement of my London house, it had seemed almost comical, even knowing what I knew, yet down here I chanted in deadly earnestness. The hair on the nape of my neck and backs of my hands prickled as if the crypt were charged with electricity. I glanced nervously in the direction of the far end of the crypt where the grille let in the soft glow of moonlight; somewhere back there was a stairway to a deeper part of the tomb and I could almost believe that I saw shadows writhing there on the edge of my vision.
Now, I began the ritual itself. It began with a series of sibilant syllables that Prinn, in his Mysteries of the Worm, described as The Sacred Aklo, the meaning of which wasn’t provided; I’d found other references to ’Aklo’ in various occult texts, but nothing that enlightened me here, although Marianne’s annotations stated that were the language of some primal Serpent Genii that had ruled the Earth before men. These syllables were a preliminary to the proper ritual chant that was couched in a florid and somewhat ungrammatical Latin, the gist of which I understood, although many of the names were a mystery to me.
I began the chant:
“By the element of fire and the element of air,” I began.
“By the element of earth and the element of water;
“By the element of life that binds them all;
“By all five terrestrial elements I call to your soul;
“By these five I call to you.”
With each spoken line I circled the pentacle. Halting at her feet, I raised the willow wand and pointed it towards her head, towards the crystal. Although I was now facing towards the far end of the crypt, I resolutely resisted the urge to look to see if anything moved there.
“In the name of Lir and the name of Neit,” I continued.
