The Minotauress

by Edward Lee

  "You're talkin' more'a that satanic shit, like what Crafter's into, ain't'cha?" Balls needed clarification.

  "Oh, yes. This man Crafter has quite a hobby."

  Dicky fidgeted at the sight of the girl. "What's that big college word you just used?"

  "Incarnation? It means ‘to make flesh,' in other words, Crafter solicited this tephramanic ritual to summon a netherwordly spirit or even... a demon."

  Balls and Dicky stood silent.

  The Writer lit another cigarette and made a closer inspection. The unfortunate woman had been hung on the door by means of a sharpened iron spike sunk directly through the hollow of her throat. Much blood was in evidence, naturally, running down her pallid body and cellulite-pocked legs, to pool at the floor. The blood was dry and browning. Her feet and lower legs were a murky blue. "I'd say she's been dead a day or two," the Writer estimated. "The decomposition of the body is not yet acute, and I'd also say... she's not the first to suffer such a fate in this room." Now his flashlight tracked along the floor. More splotches of dried blood existed before each of the six wood-plank doors in the bizarre room.

  The Writer opened the door to which the girl had been impaled. There was nothing behind it except for crudely lain bricks.

  "The fuck's that all about?" Balls asked. "If Crafter did all this devil's jazz to get a demon here, a hallway to hell's what should be behind that door, not just bricks, right?"

  The Writer chuckled. "While the ritual is active, yes, but of course only in Crafter's mind. There are no real doorways to Hell or demons, Mr. Balls."

  "Yeah?"

  "Let's not get carried away here, gentlemen. Crafter is an occult fanatic. He believes himself to be a retainer for the Devil, by serving him in such ways. But the notion is actually no different from someone rubbing a rabbit's foot for good luck, or avoiding cracks on the sidewalk. It's superstition. Crafter is probably just delusional, and thinks he's summoning demons or whatever, but it's really just hoopla."

  Dicky squinted. "Hoopla?"

  "You know. Ballyhoo."

  "What's ballyhoo?" Balls asked.

  The Writer slumped. "It's bullshit, gentlemen! Occult science does not exist. It's not functional. Its supporters merely believe it is."

  "Oh." Balls stroked his goatee.

  "But if it's all bullshit," Dicky posed, "then you's mean the chick I'se fucked upstairs all painted black who dumped all that slop out her pussy... wasn't a demon?"

  "No, Mr. Dicky," the Writer insured. "She was a hallucination. The kariolytic fumes from this corpse made you and Cora see the woman and made me see that growing starfish shape upstairs. Or something along those lines. Let me make myself perfectly clear. Have you guys even heard of Emmanuel Kant?"

  "No," Balls and Dicky answered in unison.

  Ask a silly question... The Writer thought of a way to dumb things down. "Kant was the greatest philosopher to ever live. He disproved every philosophy and in this disproval he thereby proved something else: that mankind must have been created by a higher being—God, in other words. He proved this with mathematical theorems. It's incontestible. The only entity that can possibly exist beyond man is God. There's no room for anything else, including the Devil, demons, Hell, etc. For God and the Devil to exist simultaneously, then human volition would have to be teleologic—and we know that this cannot be. It's all math."

  Balls' eyes seemed mistrustful. "So God ain't nothin' but a bunch'a numbers?"

  "In a sense, yes. He exists by means of a never-ending equation that created everything, and God is the beginning of the equation. Understand?"

  "No," Balls and Dicky answered in unison.

  The Writer sighed smoke. "Listen, just trust me. Crafter didn't bring any demons here—he merely thinks he did."

  "Then what's that writin' on that little plate over the door, above the dead chick's head?" Balls pointed.

  The Writer squinted. "Oh, I didn't see that." He shined his light right up.

  And stared.

  A tiny brass plate had been mounted in the keystone, and engraved upon it was were several Greek letters.

  The Writer made a rare departure from his avoidance of profanity. "Holy shit... "

  "What is it?" Balls urged, impatient.

  "It's Greek... "

  "You speak Greek?"

  The Writer rolled his eyes. "Of course."

  "Then what the fuck's it say?"

  After a difficult pause, the Writer told him.

  "It says ‘Pasiphae.'"

  ««—»»

  The Writer tried to assess every conceivable angle of the situation. Dicky had said this "woman" had called herself Pasiphae. How could he make that up? These two guys are white trash, not scholars of myth. Still, the Writer had to ask.

  "Gentlemen, if I may. Are either of you familiar with the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur?"

  Balls and Dicky looked at him cockeyed.

  "That's what I thought." The Writer sat down at the table full of books and instruments. "I'm trying to reckon a conclusion: how Dicky could have heard the name Pasiphae upstairs earlier, and then we come down here to find the name written in its original Greek on the transom of that door. So when you gentlemen were children, in school, you never learned any Greek mythology?"

  "Writer," Balls began an honest answer, "when we was kids, we was cuttin' class, stealin' hubcaps, and peepin' inta chicks winders so's we could gander some hair pie'n beat off. We didn't learn no Greek shit."

  "You talkin' 'bout stuff like Herck-a-lees?" Dicky ventured.

  Eureka! The Writer cracked his hands together. "Yes! This is a story along similar lines. Greek mythology comprises the first stories of sophistication in the history of mankind. The first genuine allegories. Thousands of years ago, it is said, the great god Poseidon gave Minos, the king of Crete, a splendid white bull to be sacrificed, but before that could take place, Minos' wife... became, uh, attracted to the bull and, well, she decided to have sex with it."

  Dicky stared, mouth open. Balls frowned. "The chick fucked the bull, you mean?"

  "Actually, yes, Mr. Balls. The chick... fucked the bull, a bull that was intended to be sacrificed to the gods. By circumventing Poseidon's will, big trouble would ensue. Minos' wife later gave birth to the product of her aberrant union: a terrifying creature stronger than Hercules himself, a creature called the Minotaur. This beast was, for all intents and purposes, a demon. It possessed the body of a man and the head of a bull." Then the Writer glanced at Balls and Dicky for effect.

  Balls slammed his fist down on the table. "What kind of a a-hole are you? We'se got some serious whacked out shit goin' on here and you're blabberin' 'bout some king's squeeze who got the blocks put to her by a fuckin' bull! What the fuck are we'se supposed to do with that?"

  The Writer half-smiled. "The king's ‘squeeze' was a woman of untold beauty, and her name was Pasiphae."

  Balls' anger dissipated, giving over to puzzlement.

  "That's what the splittail upstairs tolt me her name was," Dicky re-clarified, "‘Fore I'se fucked her and then she started squirtin'—"

  "Yes, yes," the Writer severed the viscid retelling. "I'm simply trying to find a way to justify the coincidence."

  Balls gave a mirthful laugh. "So's this time, instead'a fuckin' a bull, she fucked Dicky?"

  Dicky laughed back. "Well, I'm damn near hung like one!"

  "Yeah, well your mamma tolt me she'd seen bigger cigarettes."

  "Yeah? Well your Daddy tolt me when you's were a baby you spent more time suckin' his dick than suckin' your momma's tittie!"

  What am I going to do with these guys? "Gentlemen, gentlemen, please. We're in a conundrum here, and we need to take some action." The Writer gestured the floppy breasted corpse hanging on the door. "Crafter's occult delusions are obviously of a very extreme nature, and whether you believe in the occult or not, a murder has been committed. Our most logical course of action is to leave without delay. If we get caught in this house, or are seen by passersby
anywhere in its proximity, we could be accused of this murder."

  Dicky responded to the Writer's logic by posing the most illogical question. "So's what was all that spunky lookin' goo that this Pasiphae gal spat out her pussy all over the rug upstairs?"

  The Writer rubbed his temples. "You're missing my point, Mr. Dicky. I don't believe that Pasiphae ever was upstairs—"

  "But Dicky seed her with his own two eyes," Balls interjected, "and so did Cora."

  "—nor do I believe there was ever any ‘goo' on the carpet upstairs."

  Balls' face screwed up. "But you done said ya saw it yer own self!"

  "No, I said I believe that everything any of us think we saw was an hallucination," the Writer reasserted. "A stressful situation, a sinister house, an unknown set of circumstances, plus the fumes of human decomposition. I believe that all these elements have aggregated and caused us to have a manner of shared hallucinations—a mirage, so to speak." He pinched his chin. "The only thing I can't figure out is how Dicky believed this imaginary woman referred to herself as Pasiphae when he was previously unfamiliar with the mythology... "

  "Then maybe you're fuckin' wrong," Balls suggested. "Maybe it ain't a hallucination. Maybe it's all real, somethin' from Crafter's devil-worship'n shit." Now Balls struck the most contemplative look of his life. "So's far, all of us've seen somethin' in this house ‘cept me... "

  "Ah, you've harnessed your powers of deductive reasoning," the Writer enthused. "Therefore?"

  Balls rubbed his hands together. "Guess it's time fer me go upstairs'n check it out myself... "

  (VII)

  Balls mounted with steps up with confidence. What I got to be afraid of? Some crazy black chick? Bunch'a shit on a floor? Gun in belt, hickory pick handle in one hand and flashlight in the other, Balls reflected his current state of actualization: I ain't afraid'a nothin'.

  He yelped when he turned on the landing and saw a figure facing him, which turned out to be a decorative suit of armor. Shee-it... He closed the basement door behind him, ill at ease, for some reason, by the look of the cross hanging on it. Candlelight shifted over the walls, and for a moment he thought he could see faces forming... but he knew that couldn't be. When he looked up the stairwell to the second floor, a depthless black void looked back at him. Don't be a pussy! he yelled at himself, and then he patted his pistol for good measure and began to climb the steps.

  The boards beneath the carpet creaked like old ladies laughing. Each step up seemed noticeably higher than the previous. The flashlight bored through darkness thick as insulation, and once he set foot on the landing, he froze, startled, at a strange thumping sound but then smirked when he realized it was his own heart.

  He turned into the first room and snapped the light to all corners. This must be it, he knew by the smell. Smells like cum'n pussy in here. A fancy bed with mussed covers sat against the wall; then he shined his flashlight down and stared.

  The indescribable starfish-shaped goo lay there... moving. I don't care WHAT that writer says—this ain't no halluci-fuckin'-ation... Each elongation of the milk-marbled configuration seemed to grow like a slow trickle. Whatever this stuff was, though, Balls could not construe it as a threat.

  Waste'a time. We should be loadin' up the haul... Disgruntled, he checked the other rooms, which offered more of the same: old-style furniture, old paintings and the like.

  Fuck this. Time to git back to work'n git out'a this freaky joint. He headed back toward the stairs but paused. Something unbidden made him hesitate... and he peeked back in the first room...

  The muck on the floor was beginning to... get up, two of the viscid configuration's extensions serving as legs. A vague tumescence misted about the room, and even some of the bulbs in the lamps flickered—as though the rising thing carried some inexplicable static electricity with it. Balls couldn't know, of course, that this phenomenon came from the flux of its Death Force, the residue of which carried over from its genetic origins which were rooted not of this earth but of the Labyrinthine District of Hell. Soon the spindle-form mass stood upright and close to six feet in height. Balls' sensibilities were now essentially high-jacked by his witness of what was taking place: a Para-Planar Birth.

  He just stood and stared as the featureless stick-figure began to evolve before his eyes.

  A crush of sounds percolated about the room, something like hardboiled eggs being peeled, and rushing sewage, and emphysematic respiration. The clock he'd heard ticking previously now seemed to tick ten times faster, all the while the thing before him growing in girth and taking on more details, until—

  Balls' breath locked in his chest.

  The thing stood complete: a beautiful nude woman with large, high-riding breasts, indefectable curves, and a plump, hairless pubis. Her skin shone fresh, poreless, and alabaster-white.

  And one last detail: this "woman" had the head of a bull.

  It appeared to be of the Angus variety, with shimmering black hair flowing down the arched muscular neck, then over the woman's sleek shoulders. Eyes green as backlit emeralds glittered in the small round sockets. But of this entire being—this monstrous crossbreed—the most notable feature was the pair of long, curved horns sprouting from its head.

  It stood for several moments, seeming to stare at Balls as if uncomprehending. Then its delicate white hands caressed the burgeoning bosom. Thumb and index fingers teased the puckered dark-pink nipples, then the hands slid down over the flat abdomen and glided over the pubis. Then—

  It looked again to Balls, snorted, and charged.

  Balls came out of his stasis fast enough to yell, leap backward out of the room, and slam to the door. A bang and a crunching sound were heard immediately thereafter, and instantly two splintering holes appeared in the door through which jutted the tips of the entity's horns.

  Balls fumbled for the pistol, then—

  BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

  Six .455 bullet-holes tracked up the center of the door, right between the horn-points. Balls stood wide-eyed in the sequent silence, waving away smoke. No way in fuckin' holy hail I missed, he thought.

  The door exploded, splintery shards flying, and the unfathomable creature stepped through, jerked its head, and snorted a string of mucus.

  Balls had a half-second to notice the six bullet-holes in the back bedroom wall, then he ran down the stairs as fast as he'd ever run in his life.

  (VIII)

  During Balls excursion upstairs, Cora remained unconscious on the floor while Dicky meandered around the strange room of bookshelves, Doric columns, and old doors. The Writer continued to smoke as he examined the pile of very old books set around the table.

  Every second that transpired felt more like a minute. Dicky kept looking up at the ceiling. "What's takin' him so long?"

  "Relax, Mr. Dicky. He seems like a pretty thorough man."

  "But what if... What if the black chick came back and now—now she's fuckin' Balls?"

  "I have every confidence that that's not the case."

  Dicky groped for any distraction. "What's with all them books?"

  "These are some very interesting books indeed, Mr. Dicky," the Writer said. "Hundreds of years old, and more proof of Crafter's devotion to his satanic delusion." There were a number of tomes that Crafter had obviously taken down off his shelves for the ritual he'd engaged in. One wasn't a book at all but a yellowed manuscript which the Writer was leafing through now. "But this holograph is the most interesting of all. They're hand-written notes by an infamous astrologer and occult translator named Dr. John Dee. Evidently he compiled these missives between May and December of 1581; he was translating ritualistic techniques from various sources, for his own use. This passage here—" The Writer pointed to the yellowed sheet of vellum. "It was translated from an older book, thought to no longer exist, called the Magnum Maleficarum, originally penned in Old Latin. The passage copied here is entitled ‘The Proper Procedure and Use of Eibon Wood.'

  "Never heard of him."

&
nbsp; "It's not a him, Mr. Dicky. It's a type of conditioned wood, and you may be intrigued when I explain what's written here. It tells of how wooden planks can be ritualistically conditioned by burying them in a graveyard of unconsecrated ground that served as the final resting place for condemned witches."

  Dicky's brain could almost be heard clicking. "The graveyard we seed outside! Lots of 'em were half dug into."

  "Precisely. It's a solid bet that the wooden planks that Crafter used to make the six doors in this room are made of such wood. Each plank was buried over the graves for a total of 666 days; then they were nailed together and used to fashion the door-faces. This manuscript here is quite concise. Dee calls these doors a ‘Talismanic Traversion Bridle.'"

  "Huh?"

  "Think of it this way. Each door is a magic door, Mr. Dicky. They've been ritually charged with an occult power to close off the passage to a netherworldly domain—six such passages, I'd say. And when the proper ritual is enacted... that barrier—that bridle—comes down, and the door opens to a predesignated supernatural realm." Again the Writer's eyes gestured the corpse hanging by the spike through its neck. "Lowering this barrier, of course, must involve a human sacrifice. Before Crafter left on his trip, it's clear he engaged in such a task, and that poor girl was the fodder for the rite."