The Bestiarum Vocabulum (TRES LIBRORUM PROHIBITUM)

by Dean M. Drinkel

  The large figure stared at us through the rain, and although it had the basic features of a man, it seemed oddly misshapen in certain areas. Too thick. Like a stickman cast from sturdy branches. Yet its skin...like an oil slick on a landscape canvas.

  “Who are you talking about? It’s probably just a bum.” Although those were the words I spoke, I knew it was a lot more than that.

  Lightning ripped through the sky, casting enough light over our intruder to reveal its muddy brown exterior. When darkness returned the creature was gone, overtaken by the forest and its dark crevices.

  We backed away from the window. I yearned to scream, but the silence of my friends restrained me.

  “Do you remember now, Jeremy?” Jacob asked.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned to Jacob and grabbed him by his T-shirt.

  “Remember what? What are you talking about?”

  A loud bang echoed from the kitchen door, reverberating through the cabin floor and my shaking legs.

  BANG!

  This time a loud crack resounded through the cabin.

  “Block the door!” I shouted as I charged forward and threw my weight against the door. I did my best to calm my breathing, only to find the deafening silence and lack of effort from my friends insufferable.

  BANG!

  This time from the front door.

  I crossed the cabin, glancing at my friends who merely stood watching, and leaned against the door.

  “It’s angry at you, Jeremy,” Matt chanted. “For running away.”

  BANG!

  “Please, guys. You have to help.”

  “We can’t help you,” Caleb replied. “You don’t even remember.”

  “Please, boys. You’re my friends. We can sort out what happened later. Please!”

  Their facades became less morbid and more sympathetic, their faces regaining colour. They dashed to the front door while I moved back to the window. A renewed vigour took hold of me, knowing my friends were there for me. I was just happy to have friends.

  The creature backed away from the door and remained motionless for several seconds, swaying back and forth as it contemplated its next move, staring straight at me. Then it grew thinner and smaller.

  “It’s dissolving. I...think it’s going away.”

  It didn’t take long for the creature to thaw into the ground like mud swept away by the rain. I tried to regain my breath.

  “Do you remember now, Jeremy?” Caleb asked behind me.

  I turned to face them.

  Their milky eyes stared at the door. “It’s coming for you.”

  “Not again. What are you talking about?”

  “You’re the only one left,” Matt stated.

  I didn’t know what was going on, what to say. Why were my friends acting so weird in the face of danger?

  “Our creation,” they said in unison before moving away from the door, an invisible force pushing them back, “from the Pits.”

  A black mass gurgled through the gap between the door and the floor.

  “Look out!” I screamed.

  The mudslide quickened once it oozed past the door, first spreading across the floor like a black sea and then gathering. The fire glistened off the creature’s head as it rose from the mud, followed by his shoulders, chest and waist.

  “Fucking stop it!” I shouted.

  Caleb jumped over the couch and attempted to kick the creature, but it pulled its arm from the mud pit and struck his legs out from under him. The powerful blow sent Caleb cartwheeling through the air till he crashed against the door, his neck twisting at an awkward angle.

  The creature stood up and turned to me. The last of the mud seeped into his feet like lighting fast slugs.

  Matt lunged his fist towards the intruder’s face. Its monstrous arm whacked him over the head and he crumbled to the floor.

  The creature seemed to grow even larger. I could feel it feeding off my life force.

  “What is it, Jacob?” I asked. “How do we stop it?”

  “It’s the Golem, Jeremy. Our Golem that we built by the Pits on our last vacation together.”

  His words brought a vague picture to mind – a dwarf-sized figure formed from mud. I recalled Jacob copying down a spell from his Rabbi Grandfather’s notes. We didn’t know it would work.

  The Golem’s heavy body inched forward.

  “But why is it after me?”

  “You have to command it. Like you did that day.”

  I stared at the Golem and ordered it to stop, but the creature moved its tree-trunk legs closer and closer, reaching its hands towards me.

  I circled the room, stumbling over empty beer cans and ruined furniture. Whatever I could to stay out of its reach.

  Jacob stood motionless beside me, staring at me with dead eyes as if there was no attacker. “Remember now?”

  The Golem picked up the couch and raised it to the ceiling.

  “Yes, now I remember!”

  I ducked out of the way just as the Golem slammed the couch onto Jacob. Jacob hit the ground and the Golem buried my friend beneath it.

  I was overwhelmed with the urge to flee, yet it felt wrong to leave my friends. More wrong than anything I’d ever done in my life. I needed to fight this creature and save my friends.

  “Leave us alone!”

  I scanned the room for some sort of weapon or idea on how to defeat my monster.

  It inched forward.

  I noticed the blood of my friends spattered across the floorboards, an eerie sensation of déjà vu grasping me. Blood. Where had I seen so much blood before?

  I closed my eyes to shake the memory free. The Pits! The bodies of three boys spread across the muddy surface, their faces caked with blood, their skin discoloured and cold and shrivelled in the freezing night air, waiting to be found.

  When I opened my eyes my heart almost stopped. On first gaze it looked like naked aliens lying on the floor. It took me a while to realize what they were: where the injured or deceased bodies of my friends laid moments earlier, now lay the limp bodies of the three young boys.

  Young Caleb suddenly turned his blood-smeared head to face me. His eyes opened to reveal a white emptiness threatening to swallow everything – the lake. “Remember now?” he said in a youthful voice before turning away.

  Matt faced me next. “You ordered it to kill us, Jeremy.”

  “No. That’s not true. I’d never -”

  “You let it kill us, Jeremy.”

  The boy versions of my friends kept switching between living and dead, dead and living, only to accuse me over and over as the Golem moved closer.

  “No! You guys aren’t dead. You invited me here. What about this afternoon?”

  “You were always alone,” Matt stated.

  “No. You phoned me.”

  Jacob shook his head.

  “You phoned me!”

  They shook their tiny necks.

  I was forced to scan through my memories, but everything felt so distant and vague, like long lost stories told by others. A veil of fog lifted and I was flooded by visions of that morning: I was in my office, alone, talking to a secretary that wasn’t there, the coffee cup in my hand discharging the strong odour of alcohol. Of course the secretary wasn’t there – she’d quit the day I tried to force myself on her, the same day my partners threatened to sew my “alcoholic ass.” And no secretary meant no phone call.

  More visions: I was driving alone, still drinking. There were no cars in front of the cabin, no one to greet me. I sat alone on the coach as well, walked alone to the Pits. Always drinking. Always talking to myself. Always alone! Since that day the young me saw the Golem kill my friends. Their bodies were only found the following day.

  I dropped to my knees and cried. “I’m sorry, so sorry. I didn’t know it would really kill you. Hell, it was just standing there. And once it started, I was too scared to do anything else but run.”

  Their dead faces turned to me, expressionless. I couldn’t tell if
they were angry or friendly. Was I forgiven?

  “But what about the fight?” I asked. “Or is the Golem also my imagination?”

  “You only saw what you wanted to see. We never fought the Golem. It doesn’t even know we’re here.”

  I peered up at the large Golem standing in the centre of the room. It had stopped when I started begging for forgiveness. “So it’s real.”

  “And he’s been instructed to kill you.”

  I was about to ask by who, when the truth revealed itself...once more. “I wanted to kill myself earlier this morning. In a way I guess I still do. Especially now. It just feels wrong to live after what I’d done to you guys.”

  “You need to kill it if you want to be happy again. Trust me. You have to rub it out, Jeremy. Finish it once and for all. Give us peace.”

  I recalled Jacob reading his Rabbi Grandfather’s notes – the shem and incantation placed in the Golem’s mouth, the word emet inscribed on its forehead. I knew what had to be done.

  The moment my mind reached clarity the Golem started again, barrelling down on me. I shouted for my friends to forgive me and leapt into the arms of my monster.

  My ribs strained under the pressure of his bear-hug.

  He charged towards the wall and his black eyes penetrated me – eyes of anger and pain. I’d left it alone all these years. I knew its pain, and it knew mine.

  I reached for the inscription on its forehead and with my thumb rubbed out the e, turning emet into met – life into death.

  The Golem’s grip loosened, yet momentum carried us through the cabin wall.

  ***

  So here I lie, buried beneath a mountain of cold mud that’s slowly seeping into my mouth and nose and down to my throat. My body broken and ravished.

  I can’t recall everything that happened that day my friends died, but I remember the Golem, and running away. It was days before I could say a word. Of course no one believed a young boy rambling on about a monster made from mud . . . they believed it was some random Satanist wandering through the area.

  No one ever blamed me.

  I guess I couldn’t live with the guilt and shut the truth in, burying it deep down. No wonder I was so unhappy every day after that. Strange how guilt, even with the trigger events forgotten, can destroy one’s life. Either that or the Golem truly was feeding off my life force.

  I truly was living in its shadow.

  But now the Golem is gone, and I feel peace. Glorious, overwhelming peace. If it wasn’t for the pain, I’d probably be smiling.

  I believe I’m ready to see my friends again, to play with them by the lake, to run down the grass embankments and do somersaults off the pier and swim and splash...

  Just the four of us.

  Like old times.

  H Is For Helicoprion

  Rakie Keig

  Everything about the exploration of the cave was routine until they found the dead fish.

  Timothy spotted it first. He was leading, pushing through the chest-high water with steady strides, the light from the carbide lamp on his helmet shedding a warm glow. As he emerged into the chamber at the end of the tunnel, he made a small noise of surprise that was almost lost in the overlapping echoes. Simon, a few metres behind him, looked up to see Timothy pushing through the water with new excitement.

  The chamber was twenty feet high, its walls rounded like the inside of a bowl, its lower portion flooded to a depth of four feet. At its north end, a mud-bank rose from the water, forming a small beach. The first time they were there, ten days earlier, Timothy suggested the chamber looked like the bottom of a wide-based vase tipped on its side. It was a dead end, the very bottom of the cave system.

  Timothy slowed as he reached the muddy beach. A trail of stirred-up silt marked his passage through the water.

  "What've you found?" Simon called. Even though he was only a few yards away, he had to shout to make himself heard. Every movement through the water sent sloshing echoes bouncing off the walls.

  Timothy climbed onto the mud-bank. He bent to examine a pale shape next to the water, the movement made awkward by his wetsuit constricting his joints. "It's a dead fish," he reported.

  "Lovely."

  "It's bigger than my hand. Well, about. Half of it is missing."

  Simon peered down into the water. "So the other half's floating around somewhere?"

  "Come look, will you?"

  "To be honest, I'm not that interested. I've seen cave fish before."

  "It's not a cave fish. It's got eyes."

  That got Simon's attention. "Really?" He waded onto the muddy beach, stopping to tip water from his welly-boots.

  Timothy crouched beside the fish. The rear half was missing, a tangle of glistening innards resting on the mud. Judging by the smell it had been there for some time. Unlike the small fish they'd found in other parts of the cave system, this one had bulbous eyes.

  "It's a pike, isn't it?" Timothy asked.

  "Looks more like a knifefish. Bluntnose knifefish are pretty common around here."

  "I swear you make those names up. But you know what this means, right?"

  Simon nodded. "If it's got eyes, it spends time outside, which means there's an exit down here."

  Timothy's broad grin threatened to split his face. "An exit big enough to admit fish. We should bag this up and take it to the surface."

  The idea of carrying the smelly fish for three hours of climbing didn't appeal to Simon. "How about we take photos?"

  "Not exactly the same, is it?" Timothy sighed. "But, yeah, you're right. Okay." He clapped his gloved hands. "I'll poke around in the water. See if I can find this fish-exit."

  Simon pulled off his gloves before searching for his camera in the waterproof bag that contained all his essentials. He unclipped his helmet and set it down beside him. They were using open-flamed carbide lamps rather than electric head-torches. The lamps had the advantage of giving a warm, bright light, as well as a chemical smell that Simon quite liked. He turned up the flame and warmed his fingers. The descent from the surface was arduous, including two pitches over a hundred feet each, and he was already tired, even before the return journey.

  Yet the fish was a promising discovery. It was the first real proof of a through passage between this cave and the lower Agazu system. The caves were only discovered the year before, and he and Timothy were amongst the first to explore them. It gave Simon a buzz to know there were still undiscovered places in the world. Dye tests had revealed the stream flowing into the caves high on the mountainside was the same one that reappeared from Cueva Agazu five miles farther down. The resurgence was a wide, low cave flooded by a deep azure lake. At that moment, several of Simon's friends were diving in the lake and the cave mouth, searching for the other end of the hypothetical passage into the main system. Timothy, who had zero aptitude for diving, had suggested he and Simon look for a way through from the other side.

  A fish, even a dead fish, was therefore exciting. If fish could swim in and out via some underwater passage, humans with dive gear could possibly do the same.

  Simon found his camera. It was a hardy, waterproof model that had seen many escapades, and had the added benefit of large, tactile controls. In the cold caves his fingers quickly became numb and clumsy.

  He snapped a few pictures. No matter how he framed it, it still looked like an ugly, mutilated fish.

  "It looks kinda different," he remarked.

  "To what?"

  "To a regular knifefish." Simon raised his voice to be heard over the sloshing water in the enclosed space - even though they were less than twenty feet apart, all conversation was conducted in shouts. "The head and eyes are wider."

  "Ooh, a new species. That puts a cap on today, no?"

  "Probably a mutation. It's difficult to tell from half a fish."

  "I'll watch out for the other half."

  Simon crouched to take a closer photograph. Something about the fish niggled his memory. Its shape was different to the knifefish t
hat proliferated the local rivers, but it was also strangely familiar.

  He shrugged it off. His tired mind could be mistaken.

  Simon adjusted the focus of his camera and, with morbid curiosity, snapped a picture of the tattered entrails. Despite the decay, he saw the individual rips made by the teeth of whatever had killed the fish. His assumption was that the creature had died then been nibbled by its fellows, but if that was the case there should be more damage to the soft areas like the eyes. On closer inspection it looked like the fish was killed by a single bite. But no, that couldn't be right, because there were dozens of teeth marks, so close together they couldn't be from a single creature...

  "Oooooh," Timothy said. "Found a deep spot."

  Simon looked up to find him chest deep in the freezing water, near the north wall, his hands held up like he was surrendering. He wobbled on one foot and used the other to probe the muddy bottom.

  "What've you got?" Simon asked.

  "Not sure." Timothy frowned. "There's a rockfall and...feels like a gap...hang on." He pulled off his gloves then bent down, grunting as the water swirled up to his chin. "I think...ooh, there's a current."

  "You sure?"

  "Not really. Could be I've stirred up the water with my flailing. Hold on."

  Timothy stood like that, one hand thrust below the surface, the other held high for balance, his head tipped back. Simon took a photo.

  "Cut that out," Timothy complained. "This is for science."

  "Of course." Simon took another photo.

  "You're just jealous. When they dive this passageway and find the link to the lake, they'll name it after me. The Tim Link. El Link de..." He broke off, staring into the water. "Hey, what..?"

  Timothy lost his balance and toppled sideways. It was so sudden and unexpected that Simon burst out laughing. He assumed his friend had slipped on the mud. He lifted his camera to capture the moment when the man reappeared.

  When Timothy burst out of the water though, it was with a cry so loud it froze Simon to the spot. Muddy water plumed around Timothy as he flailed blindly. His right arm came up and the water was doused with a crimson spray.

  "Oh, Christ!" Simon dropped the camera and waded into the pool. "Tim! It's okay!"