The southeaster is gusting ferociously and I traverse the lawn so I can go lean against the stationwagon.
“Will you be all right, Jamie?” Botha asks.
“Cigarette,” I say.
The man complies and even holds the lighter for me because my hands are shaking so much. My body feels as if I’ve just survived a mosh pit on metal night.
“You say there were voices. Did you hear what was being discussed?” I ask.
Botha shakes his head. “It was not a language that I understood. And I’m not sure I want to know what happened.” He frowns but doesn’t ask any uncomfortable questions. It’s already enough that he, a staunch, upright Christian, relies on the likes of me to do his job. The lesser evil to take care of the greater evil. The man’s a pragmatist. Gotta give him that.
If only he knew that the greater evil is possibly standing here right next to him.
I smoke my cigarette alone while Botha goes back inside, ostensibly to reassure the Carolus family that all is now well. I’m just happy I’m not stuck in that dreadful little room. The sky is blue, the wind tears ragged birds across the horizon where Table Mountain lies in repose—a great bluish reclining giant. Maybe it’s better that I don’t probe too deeply about what just happened here.
* * *
I’m stuck in a dilapidated train station, desperately trying to get to the right platform. The train’s about to leave from a platform I can only reach if I cross the rails, and I’m being chased by half a dozen knife-wielding gangsters. The signal changes from orange to green, and the conductor blows on his whistle.
“Wait!” I cry out, but my voice is thin and strained, and the gibbering pack behind me is closing in.
I jump down onto the gravel and a sharp pain shoots up from my ankle. I’ve twisted it and the pounding of feet behind me is all impetus I need to keep going.
I’m dreaming, gotta be dreaming. When last have I caught a train?
A blare of a siren and I turn in time to see an oncoming train approaching too fast. My foot won’t lift; something’s tugging on me. Fuck! Somehow my boot’s gotten jammed in a gap between the rail and the sleeper. What the hell?
Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. An engine roars and a siren paints the air with its horror. Even as I pull hard on my restrained foot I look up in time to be blinded by...
...I jerk upright, a scream still escaping my lips. Just a dream. It’s just a fucking dream. I suck in great gulps of air, my lungs bellows that can’t quite work hard enough to overcome the sheer terror of what I’ve just gone through.
What isn’t a dream is the caterwauling outside, though by the sound of it, the stupid fucking cats are in my house.
“Bloody hell!” I rise then stumble downstairs in time to be hit by the stink of fresh cat piss, and an escaping shadow. Nero. Maureen’s cat. In my house. He must’ve gotten in through that broken window in the store room.
Jeeze, now the cats have taken to fighting in my frigging house. So not cool.
The clock on the kitchen counter tells me it’s quarter to four. Might as well get up for yet another too-early morning. Between the dream and the cat fight there’s no way in hell I’m going to get back to sleep.
* * *
I’m standing in court, and the magistrate is a florid old man who’s berating me. “Why’m I here?” I keep asking, but he ignores me. Witnesses are called up—kids from my school days who’re still kids, for some reason; even Joost, my nemesis, is called up. All bear testimony against me and evidence is brought forward. I am so ashamed of these crimes though I don’t recall committing any of them. I’m being blamed for all the misfortunes of others. Am I such a bad person? Have I let so many people down? Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. I mustn’t cry in front of my enemies but I can’t help it. I’m such a bad person. The magistrate starts screaming at me and I want to block my ears. I’ll never atone for any of these sins...
...unholy yowling jerks me upright, and I have to first untangle myself from the bedding before I can stumble downstairs to yell at the cats. Scraps of orange fur are scattered in the back yard but of the cats there’s no sign.
Dear gods am I imagining this all?
Back inside, I check the time—quarter to three. My pulse is racing and my mouth tastes as though I’ve been feasting on half-rotted flesh.
This can’t go on. A second night in a row disturbed by nightmares so vivid they leave me shaken. And so soon after the episode with the Carolus kid? Something’s not quite right.
* * *
Somehow I drag myself through a day at the bookshop. I can’t not go, because Candice has had something come up with an aged aunt in the country. Any other day I could have begged time off in order to sort out my nonsense. I should have done a big-ass banishing ritual to clear out the astral garbage the day I’d returned from helping the kid, but of course I’m getting gung-ho in my dotage.
Now my eyes are scratchy, the lights too bright and the utz-utz-utz of the electro shit the boutique across the way is playing to supposedly attract customers is working on my last tit. I’ve lost track of how many times customers have told me, “Jamie, you look like shit.”
I’m allowed to take a lunch break of about thirty minutes and instead of going out in search of food, I set my phone’s alarm then crash on the couch. I’m so tired the whole room is spinning, and I don’t even want to consider how the hell I’m going to keep my motorcycle upright when it’s home time.
* * *
I’m strapped to a gurney and I’m being wheeled down corridors. The overhead lights are too bright and a sound like a giant bass drum thrums at the edge of my hearing. Men dressed in scrubs, with masks covering their faces look down on me but when I open my mouth to cry out against this undignified treatment, no sound comes out.
Faster and faster we go, and dimly I can hear someone calling out my name. Helpless, I can only watch as they bring me into a room that looks like it might be an operating theatre. My tormentors lift the gurney and place it on a table top. One of the guys flicks a switch and a dreadful chugging starts up. I’m able to crane my neck enough to see that a contraption that resembles one of those bone saws in a butcher’s is half a metre from the back of my skull.
I scream and scream but can do nothing as the two men grip the gurney and slide me toward the vertical blade. They mean to cut me in half lengthways...
...I scream and fall hard on the floor, and it takes me a few minutes to get my breathing back under control. My skin is slick with sweat. That’s when I notice the sting on my right wrist. A word has been etched into my skin: Sitakh.
“Fuck!” I scrabble backward until I hit a shelf and knock over a stack of books. Simultaneously the alarm on my phone goes off and I curl myself into a foetal ball for a short while until I’m certain the world isn’t about to come to an end. Desperate, I try to reach The Burning One, but the hard knot of power won’t budge, won’t acknowledge me. What the hell? Speak to me, damn you!
* * *
Dusk has barely settled and I’ve scraped together the tools for the most urgent banishing ritual I’ve ever had to concoct on short notice. The Burning One has a lot to answer for. I had enough of his shit when he pretty much nearly destroyed my life two years ago. I’m not going through this again with this Sitakh entity. Oh hell no. I’m cleaning house. One demonic entity is more than enough, thank you very much.
I light three Shabbat candles then set frankincense burning before I lay myself down on a folded-over blanket. Now the trick is to sink into an altered state without going to sleep. If I don’t succeed now I’ll most likely set myself up for a vicious cycle, and sleep deprivation does not have pretty results.
My muscles shoot with little spasms as I sink into trance, and I struggle to regulate my breathing so that the descent isn’t jagged. Gradually the world of the waking vanishes and I envision the magical space in the aethers that I reserve for my personal workings. Four stucco-plastered walls, book shelves. These should resolve fro
m the darkness but instead of the ordered “waiting room” with its four doors, I’m greeted by carnage—the table is overturned, the chairs so much kindling and the contents of the shelves torn to shreds. And the stench—that same overripe ungodly stench as in Roddy’s room smashes into my senses. I shouldn’t be smelling shit here in the aethers.
A sickly green glow hangs from the north-western corner, high against the ceiling, best described as an oversized firefly after it encountered toxic sludge. The whirring of many wings reaches me, accompanied by a chitinous chittering. Where the fuck is The Burning One?
Raw fear paralyses me, and my veins run with molten lead. Where. The. Fuck. Is. The. Burning. One?
Better the devil you know...
Not funny.
“Who are you?” I shout.
“S-s-sitakh...” comes the response.
“What do you want?”
“S-s-sitakh...”
The thing burps a cloud of noxious vapour and I stagger backward, only to trip over debris and land on my butt.
Just like in the horror movies, it approaches me, its many wings setting up a horrid buzzing. I hate fucking bugs. The kids at school once threw a stink bug down my shirt and I nearly died from the horrible stench that clung to me the whole day. The teacher wouldn’t let me go home and get changed.
Closer and closer it hovers, so that I can make out its many-faceted eyes, and the ragged mandibles that clatter.
The only sound I can make is a strangled squeak as the thing probes at me with a long thin tongue which uncoils from its maw. No-no-no-no-no-no-no!
“What do you want?” I beg.
The thing that is Sitakh lands on me. “Body good. Will do for S-s-sitakh.”
A moment of clarity brings this entire sick situation into sharp focus. The Burning One and Sitakh are like those two scrapping tomcats at war over territory—in this case, me. They both want what I can offer—indeed what the interloper most likely initially wanted with Roddy. Only Roddy’s parents got the bug hot and bothered when they called in the exorcists.
I, on the other hand, am the perfect real estate so far as any supernatural entity can see. I’m primed for the symbiosis. I don’t fight it, I welcome it. Through me, the entity can act in the material world. Luckily for the human race, The Burning One is content to simmer in my heart but Sitakh...who knows what Sitakh wants.
Where the bug’s claws clutch at my aetheric double, the skin bubbles. I have my sincere doubts that Sitakh will be content to remain a passenger. Fuck! Where’s The Burning One? Think, Jamie, think!
Sitakh wants a body. He/it thinks my body is the perfect vessel, and I’ll have to disabuse him of that notion. Then the idea bites me so hard I allow myself a sharp bark of laughter.
“I can get you a body!” I yell at the thing. “It’s better than mine!”
Sitakh twists its head to one side. “Bo-dhee.”
“You don’t want this one. I promise you don’t want it.” Fuck this has to work or I’m so screwed I’ll only be able to wish I were dead.
“What body for S-sitakh?”
“This other body has long fangs, and it can jump really high. He has claws and he is vicious. He is a terror, and has destroyed many.” I shove my memories of the caterwauling and imagine Nero larger than life—panther-sized and prowling the road outside my house. I envision his lambent green eyes and the muscles rippling beneath fur as black as death.
“What iss thisss thing?”
“It is the most violent predator, in whose territory I live. He is a killer, and many live in fear of him.”
Sitakh’s claws squeeze hard at my flesh and I try not to wince. Damn, I don’t think this is working.
“S-s-show me.”
I visualise the cat the way he was the one time I saw him, watching me from the wall between my property and my neighbour’s. I project the beast’s name—Nero—as hard as I can, and envision a link between Sitakh and Nero.
“Go, you bastard. You want this. You know you do,” I murmur, willing this unholy union with every ounce of my being.
The thing crouched atop me wavers for a moment, like it can’t quite make up its mind, but then there’s a burst of static and it disintegrates. Immediately the stench dissipates and I can rise. Slowly, the books and objects float back to their accustomed places on the shelves. The table rights itself and the bits of chairs reconstitute themselves to form furniture.
Lastly, a locked box materialises on the table. I run my fingers over the carved hieroglyphs incised into its surface and can feel the dark heart thrumming within. Safe. The Burning One is where he should be—locked away. A thrill of recognition rushes through me. I shouldn’t be so glad but I am.
* * *
Pigeons cooing outside rouse me and I’m almost surprised to discover that I’m sprawled on the floor in my ritual chamber. The candles have long ago melted into little gobbets of wax. My limbs are heavy, the muscles tight, and I’m half frozen.
I have no fucking clue what time it is but it’s early enough for the sun to be chasing away the tatters of night. And hey, hey! I’ve not been woken by a caterwauling.
As if in further confirmation that all is as it should be, I raise my right wrist. No scratchy lettering remains. I might as well have imagined yesterday’s little scarification courtesy of demonic entity. Does that mean that this falls into the realm of ‘and it was all a bad dream’? Fuck no. I know better than to doubt what I went through in my astral inner sanctum.
I might as well greet the day, and after I find my smokes, I drunk-stumble to my balcony. The city is waking; already the early roar of traffic making its way to the CBD has added its texture to the beginnings of the day. Clouds boil over the edge of Table Mountain to vanish into nothingness before they can pour down the ravines. The rough sandstone layers are tinted a salmon-gold hue just before the first rays of sunlight turn them grey. For once I bless the wind that dries the moisture from my skin, and reminds me that I’m alive.
That’s when I see Nero. He’s sitting on the roof of the old rust-bucket of a Mercedes Benz that belongs to Tony two houses down. The damned cat sits straight—all prim and proper. I’ve never quite seen an animal stare with so much intensity.
“You left of your own accord, you bastard!” My laugh sounds somewhat nervous. “It’s a fair trade.”
The animal pushes its ears back and hisses at me, before it springs off the car and vanishes from sight beneath my Golf.
I light my cigarette and figure now’s a good enough time to fix the downstairs window. Things are about to get very interesting for the local feline population, though I wonder whether Maureen will notice the improvement in Nero’s personality.
T is for Titivillus
The Press of a Button
Adrian Chamberlin
In the cold, silent isolation of his cell, Brother Jacob’s ears still rang with the screams of the tortured heretic. He hitched his habit and sat on the edge of his cot, the coarse straw digging into the thin flesh of his ankles like sharpened quill nibs.
Quill nib…the thought of continuing his task made him shudder. He placed his head in his hands, pressing the heels into his cheekbones. He could smell the aroma of ink on his stained fingers, but this was accompanied by other, more distressing odours.
The scent of blood, the stink of sweat, urine, and excrement from the interrogation room: the stench of agony and human despair that was the permanent perfume of the torture chamber. He took his hands away and slowly raised his head. Shadows had encroached upon the stone walls, and only his writing desk and the manuscript on the lectern remained bathed in candlelight. The illuminated letters and the Latin characters danced with each flicker of the candle flame, as if animated by some power that was not of holy origin.
He stood on trembling legs and shuffled to the lancet window. The breeze was stronger, cold, but it did not refresh his exhausted, dried eyes. Neither did the view: the burned oak tree of the cloister garden and the Vision it had borne on th
e Day of Tribulation.
How many years had passed since his arrival and initiation, when he was a wide-eyed acolyte, convinced that he too would one day see the Holy Vision?
The sin of pride had soon been knocked out of him; by the leather straps of the senior order, wielded with bitterness and the memory of how they too had hoped and prayed they would witness the Vision. Each stripe on his back was a result of their disappointment and frustration rather than monastic discipline, and he knew that one day he would wield the strap with just as much anger and hatred as his mentors upon the next generation of monks.
No. I will not succumb to anger. The Vision awaits me, of this I am certain. But on this winter evening, God seemed absent. Perhaps the heretic in the chamber, the servant of the Dark One, had brought spiritual darkness.
His fingers rested on the stone mantle, and he struggled to move them. They felt fused, frozen, like the icicles that clung possessively to the exterior stonework, seemingly the only thing that prevented the crumbling walls of the abbey falling to complete ruin. The heretics had a word for his condition, the affliction that all scribes succumbed to after years of painstaking transcription and illumination. Arthritis.
An old man’s disease, one that a relatively young man such as himself should not be afflicted with. There was talk of drugs, strange chemicals that were swallowed – or even injected – that would relieve the pain, alleviate the condition, without recourse to prayer! Rumours, surely; lies of the Dark One.
The Demonologia Biblica Page 28
