“So are they prisoner somewhere?”
Mustafa shook his head slowly. “No, my friend, no. They are now in the belly of the beast.”
“You mean somewhere in this valley?”
“No, the literal belly of such Ghoul. They were eaten. Such is how the Ghoul survive, like jackals on carrion, but like jackals they will sometimes kill for sustenance.”
“How can I use any of that to explain any of this to my XO?”
“You cannot. But you can report you found the vehicles.”
“Will you report this to your commanders?”
“I do not need too. It is known what happens in this valley. We do not speak of it.”
“I don’t buy it.” the Sergeant-Major grumbled, “Then how does anyone know anything about what happens here?”
“It is the mystery of the desert.”
“I can’t believe this. There has to be another explanation, those men went somewhere, even if they are who we saw dancing in the dark from smoking too much hashish.”
“Believe whatever you like Sergeant-Major. Believe in a comfortable lie if an absurd truth is too unbearable.”
“You really believe this valley is haunted?”
“I do not believe it Sergeant-Major. I know it. Truth does not change, the curse on this place does not evaporate like water but remains hidden, waiting beneath the sands for all time.”
***
Forty miles back to camp and the Sergeant-Major slammed the brakes on the Humvee.
A path of stark white bones was splashed across the road they had traveled only yesterday.
Mustafa who had followed behind, exited his jeep and stood beside the Sergeant-Major. “I count a full platoon of men, yes?”
The Sergeant-Major wiped his brow and knelt to examine one of the only artifacts still clinging to bone before him. A cheap new plastic wristwatch. Its digital date blinked ten hundred hours from three days earlier.
“It is them, yes?”
The Sergeant-Major nodded. “But why here? Why so far away?”
“As I said, I suspect they robbed a tomb or crypt, a holy place of the Ghoul and great vengeance was visited upon them. The Ghoul devoured their flesh leaving naught but bone. They then moved the bones here to draw us away from wherever their crypt must lie. Presumably halfway between here and the where the trucks were found.”
“This is pure hate, pure evil.”
“Perhaps.”
“Should we gather them up?” asked Wilson.
The Sergeant-Major looked to Mustafa, who nodded. “It will bring no ill luck to take back your own dead.”
“I still don’t understand. We must get our revenge.”
Mustafa shook his head. “You have seen their works, you have seen them dance and yet you yourself hardly believe, your commanders will not listen.”
“This was wrong.”
“I do not defend the Ghoul way, but I understand their way. They hate men.”
“Why?”
“I dare speak of this to you only once, as we are each warrior brothers under the skin. Long ago, before Muhammed brought us the Koran, men and Ghoul worshiped the same elder gods. When man rejected the elder gods to follow Allah, the Ghoul felt we were apostate and deserved punishment. Allah in his wisdom has granted men the dominion of the earth, but not of the whole earth, there are dark places, haunted places like this where the old gods still hold sway and council and in these places can never be wiped clean. You should leave Baten al Ghoul and never come back. I leave you now. Aleikum Salaam.” Mustafa got back into his jeep and turned around and disappeared back into the desert.
The Sergeant-Major over saw the rest of the bones collection and brought them back to the base camp.
***
That evening, the Sergeant-Major filed his report as truthfully as he could and the XO threw it down in disgust. “I can’t turn this in. What the hell are you thinking?”
“What am I supposed to report?”
“Whatever I tell you. It was a ‘Friendly Fire’ training accident. You are not to speak of this incident again. Send Wilson, Thompson and the rest in here so I can remind them too.”
“Yes sir.” The Sergeant-Major paused at the entrance. “Sir, what about that Saudi police officer that assisted us? He’ll know it wasn’t a training exercise.”
“You weren’t directed to have any local assistance. We were in touch with the Saudi’s and were assured there was no one within our quadrants. You must be mistaken.”
“Yes sir. I’ll get the others, sir.”
The Sergeant-Major paused trying to remember the badge on the door of Mustafa’s jeep. It had seemed odd and now that he thought about it again he sketched the design and logo as best he could on scratch paper.
“Thompson, Wilson, the XO needs to remind you that it was all a training accident. Report immediately.”
They each got up and beckoned to the other members of the fire team to follow.
“Wait, Wilson. Are any of those Bedouins around to fill up their canteens?”
“Yeah, one more showed up a minute ago.”
The Sergeant-Major strode to the water-truck and glanced about until he saw a white bearded old man adjusting a bundle upon his camel.
“Salaam aleikum.”
“Aleikum salaam.”
“Do you recognize this?” he asked holding out the sketch of Mustafa’s logo.
The old man grinned. “Aye, you met a Jinn. He must have been protecting you.”
Furrowing his brow, the Sergeant Major asked, “Protecting me?”
“Aye. You were surely blessed by Allah. They appear sometimes when men most need help and guidance against the dark forces of the deep desert.”
The Cry of Carrion Birds
Some may think me cruel and unseemly, but I only did that which was expected and proper in light of events such as they were…as maddening and unbelievable as they are. If black nightmares come spiraling out of the sky and reveal themselves as a true yet hidden reality…who are you to judge me? I believe you would take a shovel in hand just as quickly as I.
***
After the grotesque attack involving the madman at the University, upon my once beautiful wife, Tabitha, it was decided we would take the early retirement pension and move far to the western end of the state. We wanted to get away from the noisome city, backstabbing friends and especially her interfering family. I could also no longer tolerate society’s eyes gazing at her frail features, always lingering upon those scars that cut jagged like lightning bolts down her pale cheeks and lips, ending in swirling vortexes on the throat where life nearly ended. She should not have to relive that horror with every awkward glance. I grew weary of my knuckles turning white upon my trusted cane with every leer and whisper.
So, my wife and I searched for a secluded home in the mountainous Pintler range, so very far from the heavy footed paths of casual callers and unwelcome visitors. A place where life would be simpler, reclusive, quiet as we imagined it had been in the days of our noble ancestors. I had but to pour over the maps and find the least populous areas, those places almost overlooked in the westward expansion of our nation. What some might call grim and foreboding, I welcomed. Who would stare at her here? Nothing but rolling hills, turbulent rivers, forests of supreme pine, gnarled oak and the occasional aboriginal collection of scattered and ruined stone.
Beyond the dank marsh and lowlands, far up into the hills and towering mountains beyond we found there a massive old two-story cabin with four gables, wrap-around porch and a river rock chimney. The residence was owned by the Davis family; who had fallen upon hard times and now sought whatever financial gain they could before losing the property to the revenuers. The cattle fields of their bourgeois ancestors had been reclaimed by the encroaching forest, and as I had no desire to ranch it seemed the perfect place for us. The home was stark. It had no mirrors hanging on the wall nor any telephone. The climate was cool, even in mid-summer and we knew to expect a harsh winter.
All of
this was fine. Only one thing bothered me the propensity of chattering crows that lingered about the property. The owners were more than pleased to sell, since they lived more than two miles to the south in a crooked house of their own construction. Its lumber never properly dried and had warped in the months after it was built, giving the appearance of a structure ready to fly apart; and the windows were always dark, reminding one of the black secretive eyes of its inhabitants. It all seemed a reflection of the souls of these furtive beings who resembled human weasels. I made my appointments with them brief and to the point, disliking how they, too, leered at my wife through the windows of our car until the murder of crows drew our attention once again.
“Can’t abide them crows myself, but nothing gets rid of them,” said the elder Davis.
“Wouldn’t a scarecrow frighten them away?” I inquired.
“No, there aren’t even any fields here for them to sup on, they jus’ claim the place.”
“What do they eat then?”
“Whatever they can find I ‘spose,” he said grinning. “It’s your lan’ now but I woul’t recommend wandering too far off into these haunted mountains, not too many folks who did, ever came back and those that did t’were never the same.” He pointed at himself, “I’ve seen things make a preacher cry.”
Spying his offspring staring at my wife, I coughed and gestured, arresting his nonsensical jabbering. He called his children away and we finished our inspection of the property.
For a very fair price, they sold the colossal cabin and surrounding property to me with but a handshake and visit to the local bank. They were very happy they did not have to sell to other townsfolk, whom they considered beneath them. Though I would be damned if I could tell the difference.
Brooding forests and mountain peaks blockaded the pretentious kindreds and cowardly curious I feared would call on us, here we would be safe from prying eyes and gossiping vultures eager to speak of the wretched victim of that deranged slashing monster.
My wife’s sister called us mad to move out to the desolate country, oblivious that she was a leading cause of our insanity. I was so terribly pleased that she would never venture from the civilized east to visit us here, that she would not be present to remind us of what was once normal life, to speak of the balls and parties we would never again attend. I had my once beautiful bride and would keep her safe from the world. I alone could do what everyone else failed in.
Besides my pension, I found through correspondence and investments I could still make a decent living, and with a postal service visiting twice a week at the fork in the county road we had no worries of keeping contact with the few people that mattered. Thirty miles from the nearest small town and all of it down a dirt road made us feel like golden pioneers carving out the frontier from a desiccated wood.
I paid a Davis boy a reasonable sum to deliver groceries for us twice a week and thus my devastated wife never had to leave the home for sundries. In the country, we had surprisingly few expenses and were able to order fine things from the catalogs and yet still I could hear her crying late at night, remembering the horrors inflicted upon her. Though she would deny it in the morning that I had heard any such thing, tear-stained pillows do not lie. I dread the thought of how terribly unhappy she would be if I had not taken her away from the city, what further embarrassments would be inflicted upon us.
After six weeks of gentle secluded life, I was shocked to find Tabitha answering the door herself when the Davis boy came calling with his weekly delivery. They had been speaking softly and I was angry as I had told him specifically to only give me the grocery order. I cuffed him severely on the ear and was to strike him again with my cane when Tabitha begged I let him go, that it was her fault, she had answered the door. He fled and again Tabitha wept at her horrible condition and the memory aroused of her brutal attack. Holding her as tight as I could in my arms and still she could not escape the fear and sadness at her shattered life, she even deliriously cried to return to our former home and her family. But I knew those vultures would only try and reveal her hideousness to the world, a sick way of bearing themselves up at our wretched misfortune.
When came dusk, the elder Davis pulled up to my property in his ancient jalopy and I met him on the porch. Upset over his bruised son, it took but a moment of speaking to him as his better, a man of science, for him to understand my position. He smiled and replied that he was sad or sorry and saw how things were very well, and that his son would indeed continue doing deliveries for us but that he would not again speak to my wife without my permission. He then asked in his colloquial manner of the weather, the turning season and of the crows which had become naught but background noise to me. Or as I soon discovered they had been gone for some time, that was why I had not heard their incessant chattering for days now. He again advised that I stay clear of the woods and left after negotiating a slight payment increase for his son.
Tabitha watched from the windows and once Mr. Davis had gone, she stepped outside to watch the evenings crimson glow depart. We stood there for a long time before she spoke.
“I think I want to go back, visit my family, the letters by themselves get terribly boring.” She sighed and looked away.
“What of your humours? The physicians recommended you to not allow stress to overwhelm you,” I reminded her. “You don’t want the gossip and looks to sting, I don’t want that for you. I gladly sacrifice to be here and keep you from that embarrassment,” I said, putting my arm around her.
“You don’t know me,” she said, with tearful lunacy.
She threw off my gentle hand and holding her skirts up, dashed into the thick dark wood, branches and splayed twigs immediately obscured my vision. I called and pleaded at her to stop for dusk took full flight over us with cumulus wings. I worried what would the neighbors say if they could hear such a spat. I could not keep up with her pace and she knew it, the limp I received from the war kept me at half her speed and she soon disappeared in the bleak, odiferous forest.
Giving chase, I tore my tweed jacket and trousers, Phoenician red bruises formed upon my legs where stones and brambles waylaid me and it seemed the ghoulish forest itself attempted to hinder my righteous pursuit. What insanity took the woman to run as she did at this late hour?
The chase rambled uphill over dense underbrush and bloodthirsty insects seemed to swarm overhead with a nauseous buzzing, bites swelled and bled, the streaks of crimson mingled with sweat and stung. My air was running short and I was near to fainting from exhaustion and shouting for Tabitha, when near the zenith of the fiendish mount, colossal shapes loomed overhead.
Stark grey dolmens of stone, alien to this landscapes geology, erected by the hands of some lost race surely raised these. I certainly knew that the local tribes of Indians never worked in such ghastly marvels. These must have stood over twelve feet tall and there were more than a score of them in a loose circular fashion. In the gathering gloom I could not see Tabitha but knew she was nearby, the roots and leaves left a wake of her trail akin to a ship rolling through a glass-smooth bay.
The leering moon shone then, through the trees revealing sadistic glyphs that were not carved into the stone but were curiously embossed in some impossible fashion. The half-light clearly made them stand outward and I marveled in silence a moment before hearing a shriek from Tabitha not more than a dozen of paces from me through the circular altar of stone. I raced stumbling in the direction I believed her to be, when a sound like Tabitha laughing came from my far left, but Tabitha never laughed with such an ominous mocking tone. I was briefly afraid of what affect this ancient observatory had upon her, during a time like this, when witches may have gathered and held covens under stars that were not right.
The laugh came again, this time far to my right, a ludicrous speed for Tabitha to have made through the sloping surrounding woods. I called to her and received nothing in return. Angry and fearful, I glanced about as it seemed the tops of the stones swirled and ebbed against the starry
night overhead, I could not recognize the constellations and knew I must have us away from this unhallowed place.
Grateful to have the security my cane, a single primal weapon if needs be, I stumbled to the far edge of the circle and just as suddenly Tabitha appeared. She was smiling from behind one of the towering dolmens, her pale hand caressing the grooved monument.
“We must depart for home, its late, and I fear gas may leak from this hillock,” I told her.
She laughed looking into my soul with her bright blue eyes, she nodded and put her arm in mine. “We should go to your home,” she said.
Struggling down the hideous mount, I tripped many times but Tabitha now stepped carefully as if she could see better at night than I ever could. I saw her look back at the nexus of stones several times and wondered now at her curiously fright-less behavior. What changed for her in that mindless flight to make her so unafraid?
At the cabin, she still looked in the direction of the ruin, though no trace of it could be seen from our home. We made ready for bed and with my bites and scratch’s attended, we lay down and to sleep.
I could not possibly say how long I had been asleep but it must have been several hours as the light from the moon had crossed a portion of the room. And out in the cold distance of night, I thought I faintly heard a scream. A scream full of unchaste horror such as I had not heard since the madman’s razor slashed across my beloved. Tabitha’s scream.
My first thought was to leap to my feet and take the forgotten rifle out into the night, when I paused and saw she still lay there beside me, sound asleep, her white skin slightly heaving with even breaths. Standing at the window, I waited a moment longer and heard nothing more.
Lying down, I once again began to drift away to heavy slumber and the dreams came and sat at my feet and entered in. I thought I heard Tabitha scream again far out in the forest, but no, she still lay beside me with cool summer skin.
The dreams lay and hatched and I saw Tabitha running through the grim wood pursued by flapping onyx shapes, formless as the void but palpably hideous and evil. She called my name again and again, and each time, I awoke and looked, she still lay snoring evenly beside me. I wondered at the strange mountain ruins, and pondered if gas would explain the nature of the feelings I had, or perhaps a toxic insect bite, maybe I had a fever from the exertions of the night. Again I heard Tabitha scream, but no, she is still beside me, sleeping peaceful as the cosmic serpent wheeled overhead.
At the Highways of Madness Page 12
