Protectors of the Veil

by Dawn Matthews

  I know in my heart there is some connection to an ancient evil, the Jones case, and my mother’s book. This has become some sort of baffling obsession. I’m sorry if this is frightening to you, Janice, but I feel I must convey this message, or lose my mind. To what these strange and eerie revelations begin to imply are unbeknownst to me now.

  Sincerely,

  Martin

  March 6, 2016

  Janice,

  Dentner has found out information about the book. It is an ancient and obscure Babylonian book of prayers for the unrest of the dead, funerary incantations, and rites on how to summon some type of mythical demonic beings from Hell. I cannot begin to explain how disturbing this is to me! Now I am certain that my mother has ties to whatever the Jones brothers were up to! The book deals with offering the dead to appease some kind of demon older than mankind named Hastifuge. He can manifest and enslave corrupt burial grounds and further possess those who live near the burial sites. This is utterly sickening to me, but I must undergo hypnotic regression! After Dentner hypnotizes me, I will be done with all of it completely! I must understand what was taking place in and around that house when I lived there, and why and how my mother was involved. If nothing happens when Dentner hypnotizes me, that will be the end of it. Forgive me for all my lunatic ramblings, but I feel as if I am being sucked into some nightmarish whirlpool. I think hypnosis is the only thing that will help me make sense of what ‘s happening to me. I feel like I’m losing my mind. Hopefully, this will be my last letter to you of this nature.

  Martin

  April 18, 2016

  Janice,

  There is something I need you to know. I underwent the hypnotic regression yesterday. I remember it all, even some things that I cannot describe. After I am finished writing this letter, and send it in the mail, I will be no more. I have a glass of arsenic beside me that I will drink as soon as I hand the postman this letter to you. The things that took place—God, Janice. The things took place there that defy reason. I no longer wish to be a part of this world knowing what happened to me in that damnable old house.

  Here is what I remember, and please read it all, even if you can’t stand it. I was laying in my mother’s bed, napping deeply as I often did. The room had an air to it that was always mystifying to me. That is where the sliver of wood appeared to me, in my mother’s bedroom when I was three years old. Her bedroom was at the top of a narrow wooden staircase, where on any sunny day the skylight shone a thick beam of sunlight that illuminated the small room. This was the house my mother rented from old Jenny Meyer who lived next door. When Jenny came to visit my mother and me, Jenny told me this was a special house. When I asked her why the walls of that bedroom weren’t set straight, she would laugh and tell me to ask them, because they can talk. The walls had weird angles. There was a window at the far end of the room that gave access to the roof; it was the only window. My mother would crawl through the window and sit on the steep gray shingled roof on starry nights in her bare feet. Where the wall should have squared off, the ceiling made a drastic thirty-five degree angle all the way down to the floor. That’s where the bed was. It was nothing more than a mattress and box spring on the floor. There was a foot and a half space between the edge of the bed and where the wall slanted down to the wooden floor. That’s where I saw the sliver of wood, Janice. It was in that little space between the bed and the wall.

  I remember Jenny telling me that sometimes children can see and hear things that adults couldn’t. Sometimes I saw things out in the yard when I was playing, strange things that did not resemble people. Monsters really, things with hideous faces, gnashing teeth, and wings. There were peculiar people I saw from time to time as well. They would walk out from behind the side of the garage and surprise me. Sometimes they would just appear out of thin air. One of these visitors I got to know well. He told me his name was Alex. He always wore a black suit, and black bow tie, and a hat with a big brim. He would smile this horrific smile at me, and tell me to run away from the monsters that moved around in that yard. They hurt me really bad sometimes, Janice. One time my friend, Alex, gave me a silver crucifix on a steel chain and told me it would keep demons away. Later, my mother took it away from me and told me imaginary friends aren’t real and that I shouldn’t make up stories about finding things that didn’t belong to me. That’s why I never told her about the sliver of wood and what I did with it.

  I was sleeping in her bed. I remember waking up facing the space between the edge of the bed and the wall. I heard a voice I never heard before, and I was alone. I saw the sliver of wood on the floor where the slant in the wall met the floor. It was long, narrow, and pointed. The sliver was dark brown and it looked sickly, like it didn’t belong there. It spoke to me:

  “Little boy, eat me,” it said slyly.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I taste good,” it said.

  I crawled off the bed onto that little space between the bed and the wall. I picked up the sliver of wood and looked at it closely. It was at least six inches long. Its tip was as sharp as a sewing needle. It looked like it had been peeled off a rotting plank; on one angle it was narrow at the point and wider at the top, where it was flat. As I beheld it something came over me. It was like I was in a trance. I took it and swallowed it. It went right down my throat, Janice. Then I crawled back into bed and went back to sleep. When I woke up later, I thought it was a bizarre dream. There was a name I knew from then on although I never told anyone. That name was Hastifuge. After that, I could hear his voice talking to me all the time, telling me things. More strange and terrible things happened after that, too. Often, I would wake up from my sleep at night covered with blood. I thought I had died in my sleep and come back to life, but I had no wounds. I would wake up standing in front of the mirror in the dining room. The glass seemed shattered and there were hundreds of reflections, but none of them were mine. I kept seeing and hearing things around that house, even during the day. I’d tell Jenny about the thing that lived in the rafters above the living room. When she asked what it looked like, I told her it had big eyes and tentacles like an octopus; it was blood red. It would scream at me, and grab me, thrashing me around. Jenny would laugh, and say, “That’s just Isaicca, he doesn’t mean much harm.” Jenny and I kept some of these conversations to ourselves, because I knew if I told my mother she’d accuse me of making up stories. After I swallowed the sliver of wood, I started drawing pictures with crayons of the things I saw in the yard or attic. Things coming down out of holes in the sky, and monsters hiding behind the beams that held the attic ceiling up.

  There was that face in the cellar that never went away. I was afraid to go into that room in the cellar. His hands would appear from nowhere, and he’d take me by my shoulders and shake me. He told me his name was Ebenezer. I was afraid of him because he told me he was a ghost. There were things happening in that house that even I will not divulge here, secrets I will take to my grave. Things that only Dentner knows because he was the one who unlocked these memories of mine while hypnotized. There is something else I need you to know about Jenny Meyer. Earlier today I was at the hall of records in the public library. Janice, I found out that Jenny Meyer has owned that house for the last one hundred and fifty years. The house could have remained in her name, under a different owner, but she owns dozens of houses in that neighborhood dating back more than one hundred-seventy years. To my knowledge, she has never had a daughter or granddaughter who bears the same name. I don’t know what ever became of Jenny Meyer, and after these memories returned to me, I don’t want to know. If she really is that old, god only knows what unnatural forces inhabit that old lot between those two houses keeping her alive. Now this is the most terrible part, Janice, please forgive me for this. These are the last things I remember from my hypnosis, before I came out of it screaming. I was twelve years old, I was sleeping in my bed and my mother came into my room and woke me up. She says, “it’s time to go to Kris’ funeral.” We walk barefoot a
cross the lawn, and through the alley between our house and the funeral home. We walk across the blacktop parking lot to the crematorium. The door is open. I can see smoke coming out of the pipe on top of the building, black and gray smoke. It smells bad. The night sky is filled with stars. We go inside the crematorium. The Jones brothers are standing by the crematorium oven, it’s open and Kris’ body is lying there burning. We stand and watch. One of the Jones has a book, then my mother has a book. They both were reading the same words out loud together. After a while, Kris becomes a black skeleton. The other two Jones wrap Kris’ skeleton up in a sheet. We all carry Kris’ skeleton wrapped up, over to the lot like pallbearers carry a coffin at a funeral. Then we all have shovels, and start digging. We put Kris’s skeleton into the grave, I can’t tell the rest, Janice. I ‘m so sorry...please forgive me...I’m going to drink the glass of arsenic soon...I’m sorry. Don’t pray for me after I’m gone.

  Martin

  End.

  “Kris was Janice’s sister, and Janice dated Martin. There are a lot of emotions involved, and too many questions for her to let this go. Your assignment is to convince her Martin had lost his mind and was completely insane when he wrote those letters,” the female voice explained.

  “The usual, basically,” Josh said.

  “Yes,” the voice said, “I suppose that is usually the assignment. Mork will be your partner today.”

  Josh got in the car and Mork popped in. “Hello, Agent Josh Green!” Mork was always very happy and excited to work with humans.

  “Hey, Mork, how are you?” Josh asked.

  “I am well!” Mork said excitedly. “How are you, my human friend?”

  “I’m doing okay,” Josh said, “though it’s been a pretty crazy weekend.”

  “Oh yes,” Mork said, “there is a great deal going on. It’s very exciting!”

  Josh nodded, “I suppose you could look at it that way.” Josh pushed the button and they were in Janice’s driveway.

  “Hey,” Mork said, “do you think I can remain visible? I’d like to practice pretending to be human.”

  “Okay,” Josh said, “but you need to tone it down a little. You tend to be…very excited. Just be cool.”

  “Cool? What does that mean? It’s warm outside,” Mork said.

  “It means be…relaxed,” Josh said.

  “Ah,” Mork said, “I can do that.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” Josh said. Josh was hoping Mork could pull this off, but he really wasn’t sure. Even more so than some of the other Gods, Mork was off. He was never unpleasant and he was great to work with. He was just not human.

  The two men walked up to the door and knocked. They got their badges ready to flash. Nobody came to answer the door. Josh was about to knock again, but Mork stopped his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” Josh asked.

  “She’s dead,” Mork said in an uncharacteristically sad tone.

  “Can you still read her mind?” Josh asked.

  “Yes,” Mork said.

  “Find out if she told anyone and what happened to the letters. Also how did she die?” Josh said.

  “Oh,” Mork said, “a man came in and put a rope around her neck. He strangled her to death and then hung her from a railing on the stairs to make it look like suicide. He took the letters. She didn’t tell anyone about what was in the letters. I can tap into him, hang on...His name is Dentner.”

  “Okay,” Josh said, “let’s get out of here, I guess I can tell Sam.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mork said, “I’ll tell Atum.”

  “Okay,” Josh said, “thank you.”

  “I am sorry things didn’t work out,” Mork said, “but I hope we get to work together again soon.”

  “Me too,” said Josh. “See you later.”

  CHAPTER 8: VAMPIRE DREAMS

  Bertha heard the alarm that always alerted her that another case had come in. She looked it up and noticed it was flagged. This was a special unit case; there were non-human entities involved. Humans could not be placed in that kind of danger. It also made for a higher risk of human society discovering the truth. Humans had a natural tendency to not believe the truth, no matter what they saw. However, a mass sighting or something of the kind would awaken more people. Therefore, there is a unit of non-humans that hunts things. Sam, of course, also worked with them. Bertha headed to Sam’s office. She knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” Sam said.

  “This is one of your special cases,” Bertha said. “Good luck!” She headed for the door. Bertha didn’t ever know what the cases were about, she only knew which agent or department to take the case numbers.

  “Thanks, hon,” Sam said. Once the door was closed, Sam typed the case number into the computer.

  “Greetings, Samantha,” the female robotic voice said. “Case 8196487532156. The story is called…:”

  “I DREAM OF VAMPIRES”

  I fumbled with the keys as I tried to hold on to everything else. Not only that, but my mind’s contents, for the moment, were fixated on the possibilities. It was wondering what the capacity for human perception could be stretched to. If what I was attempting to prove tonight wound up being true, then there was no limit in what could be possible. Once you prove the impossible possible, it would be irrational to be skeptical of anything else. Our minds do not process its contents that way. We fervently deny everything because it’s easier than accepting. After accepting something is real then we have to understand it. Once we understand it then we can either worship it or fear it. So everything is implausibly denied, even in the face of hard evidence. It’s just easier for most people—but not me.

  I don’t doubt much these days. My eyes have been open and my mind awakened for a long time. It was just a matter of seeing, a way of satiating my curiosity. That’s what I kept telling myself, though I knew the actual reason for tonight’s exploration.

  * * *

  It was an hour drive to the address. I wasn’t so concerned with the distance as I was anxious to reach my destination. All those years of reading and more reading culminated into this hour drive to a supposedly abandoned and haunted mansion. As I drove down the final street, windows rolled down, I expected to hear creatures of the night in the surrounding woods. Owl. Coyote. A cat’s shrill cry in the distance. But there was nothing. It was almost as if something was keeping them away. The night was as quiet as it was black. New moon tonight. The only illumination was the constellations above and the flickering light of the decades old street lights.

  The road seemed to go on forever. Whoever lived at the 17th century mansion at its end must like their privacy because that’s what they had. I saw a clearing about a quarter mile ahead. Just beyond that, two columns with a gate between them at the end of the driveway. As I drove closer I noticed they were closed but it didn’t seem like they were locked. A hard shove and they flew open. I jumped back wondering where that sudden strength came from. I heard a voice off in the distance. Probably someone on the main road.

  I drove my car up to the top of the driveway. When I got out of the car, the first thing I noticed were the columns outside the front door. I recognized that symbol. It was something I found during my research—a pagan symbol of immortality.

  I thought back to the time when I first decided my life’s work was going to be seeking out the existence of real vampires. Not the Goth blood drinkers and Satanic psychic vampires, but the fictitious immortals. People laughed at me and thought me a fool. They said I was insane. I wound up quitting my job and basically lived off the inheritance money from my parent’s deaths. It wouldn’t be enough to sustain me forever, but I was optimistic. I knew that when I did find an actual living, or undead, vampire the discovery would pay for itself.

  So, like I was saying. I was thinking about my first foray into searching for vampires. The first location I ever went to had this very same symbol etched into its oaken front door. I remember the woman I met there.

  “Turn me,” I said.

>   I remember her gaze as it entrapped my eyes. They had an evil crook to them. My nerves were a mass of emotions. Even though I feared her I thought she was the most beautiful creature I ever laid eyes on. Her hair was long and black past the middle of her back. Her skin was pale yet perfect, without a single blemish. Those eyes, though. That’s all I could think about. They were a compelling mix of light blue and silver. I couldn’t stop staring at them. It was almost as if she was forcing me to do so.

  She took me by the hand. I felt this chill resonate throughout me. It was as if I had been stabbed by thousands of tiny icicles all over my shivering body. It felt like death.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I have been searching for this, for proof of real vampires, for many years. It has been a desire of mine, for longer than I can remember, to become one.”

  But then I remember that she couldn’t hold back anymore. She started laughing. At first I laughed with her because I thought for the moment we were sharing something, but then I realized she was laughing at me.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sweetheart, did you really think I was a vampire? Man, he was right. It didn’t take much to get you all excited.”

  “He? Who are you talking about?”

  It took a moment before I realized who I was talking to. It was my brother’s girlfriend. I had never met her but he had described her to me in the letters he sent me while I was traveling.

  “Cara!”

  She let out a half smile half look of pity.

  I stormed out of there—embarrassed, insulted, and angered. I stopped the hunt for a while, but reading into it got me more excited about looking at a few possibilities. That’s what brought me here.

  I pushed on the door and it creaked its way open. I felt the chill of death like a December wind come from inside. It tore through the layers of skin pounding against my bones. I tried to hide from it but its aura was everywhere. I’d never felt anything like this before. Throughout the years, I spent endless nights exploring the cemeteries, I have never felt this strong sense of death. This was an old death, one that seemed unfamiliar, like those missing pieces trapped in our subconscious just waiting to be realized. I kept my slow pace as I made my way through the mansion.