by Jaym Gates
The whispering voices washed over me and I drank them down with endless fascination. I was frozen in place, taking full deep breaths of the cold October air, my breath visible as I exhaled.
“I don’t understand a lick of it, Starkwood,” Harlan said, “but I know I’d rather take my chances inside than out here in the open.”
His fingers dug into my arm as he dragged me up the steps of the mansion with one hand, breaking whatever spell held me.
I stumbled after him up to the massive doors, spinning around and slamming my back against them. The voices among the swirls of leaves all around the clearing grew louder, to the point where I felt like my mind might split apart.
For a moment, I could hear my brain actually cracking in two. Only too late did I foolishly realize that the sound did not emanate from within my head, but rather from the door we were leaning against. It gave out, and the two of us fell back hard into the building’s interior.
We plunged into sudden silence within the mansion, leaving me to wonder if I had been deafened somehow in the fall, but no. An ooomph from Harlan as he landed beside me amidst the rotting remains of the door confirmed I still had my hearing.
I rolled and was back on my feet while Harlan struggled to catch his breath, and retrieve his dropped shotgun. When his shuffling search ceased, he stood, cupping his ear, hearing something I clearly could not.
Without a word, he turned to his left and stepped off into the darkness of the hallway. We moved further down the corridor and moments later I, too, heard what Harlan had — the echoing drum of a ticking clock. When the hallway ended, we were met by the most hideous and cyclopean grandfather clock I had ever seen.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Harlan said with a whistle. “What perversity is this?”
I knew well of the use of the grotesque in statuary, be they carved totems of an ancient people or the fanatical representations of figures from more arcane texts. But this clock! Every inch was covered with the tortured faces of lost souls and the demons that seemed to hold them captive. Here, a figure shrieked in horror as a tentacled beast tore into it, elsewhere faces of pure evil leapt from so detailed a carving they appeared almost alive.
Harlan’s brow furrowed and he raised his upper lip in a snarl of disgust. He turned his gun around, its stock now facing the clock. “We should destroy this,” he said.
I reached out and grabbed the barrel before he could act. “Hold on now,” I said. “We don’t know the repercussions of doing so.”
“Repercussions?” he repeated with a boisterous laugh, attempting to pull away from my grip. “Whatever this thing is, it’s evil.”
“People are evil,” I said. “Not objects.”
“Look around you, Professor. Look at the dust and disrepair. This place is long abandoned, yet this thing is still running like it’s been freshly wound. That ain’t right. It’s unnatural.” His face broke into a wicked grin. “Besides, you really think you can stop me from smashing this shit?”
“I can try,” I said, trying to hide the uncertainty in my voice. I’d come to fight cultists or ancient evil, not overenthusiastic rednecks.
I tightened my hold on the barrel as Harlan tried to strike the clock, and despite his superior strength, my own was enough to kill any momentum he managed to get.
With a look of pure irritation, he shoved me with his free hand, but my grip was too strong and I barely moved, despite the throbbing in my chest where he had struck me and a sudden shortness of breath.
Was I going to have to pull the sacred dagger out to stop this? It seemed madness, but what other alternative was there? I reached for my satchel at my side, but hesitated, unsure. This was escalating far too quickly for my liking.
I didn’t get long to think on it. Before I could pull my blade free or even wrap my hand around the handle of it, something flashed between Harlan and me, striking the clock. The sound of its ticking gave over to glass shattering as the two of us stood in silence, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.
“Make a little more noise, why don’t cha?” a female voice said, causing both Harlan and I to start and turn, Harlan raising his shotgun into position against his shoulder.
A small redheaded imp of a girl not even old enough to have graduated high school yet stood between us. As she pulled a short bladed staff away from the clock, she twirled it once before sliding it into some sort of sheath on her back, the spear part of it sticking up over her shoulder.
Harlan pressed the gun to her chest. “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”
I met the girl’s eyes, and she seemed unimpressed by the shotgun resting against her chest. I looked to the now broken pendulum casing of the clock, then back to her.
“You ought not to have done that,” I said, then looked to Harlan. “And you ought not to be doing that. For Heaven’s sake, she’s not much more than a child!”
I fought the urge to grab the shotgun. With Harlan’s itchy finger already on the trigger, I didn’t dare.
The girl looked down at the barrel a moment longer before her eyes locked with Harlan’s.
“Relax,” she said, reaching up with pure confidence on her face as she brushed the barrel away from her. “I’ve got this.”
Was she talking to me or Harlan?
Before I could say anything, Harlan lowered the weapon, his face awash in confusion. “You’ve got what?” he asked.
The girl rolled her eyes as if this soldier was the most obtuse thing she had ever encountered in her life. “I’ve got this,” she said. “Control of it. This whole thing.”
I cleared my throat, drawing her attention. “Maybe you could tell us what you think ‘this whole thing’ is,” I offered. “Perhaps after introductions …? I’m Professor Edgar Starkwood, and my slightly more aggressive colleague here is Mister Harlan Embry.”
The redhead gave a curtsy in her jeans and tank top, her ponytail swinging back and forth as she bowed her head forward with the gesture. “Darcy’s the name,” she said. “Demon slaying’s my game.”
“This isn’t a game,” I replied, feeling suddenly cross. “This is a matter of life and death, unspeakable evil —”
“Blah blah blah,” she said, kicking aside pieces of the broken glass on the floor in front of the clock. “Spare me the lecture.”
“The audacity of youth!” I said, barely able to contain myself. “What makes you think for one second that you have ‘got this,’ as you say?”
Darcy’s eyes locked with mine, and there was a dead seriousness in them. “Because I’m The Selected,” she said. “Duh.”
Harlan gave a short laugh. “The Selected what?”
The elfin redhead sighed. “The Selected Girl. The Selected One, whatever. Just … The Selected.”
“And who exactly did this selecting …?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
Darcy let out a sigh. “When I was young, my mother was killed by what I discovered later were demons,” she said, like she was giving a book report in front of a class. “I’ve spent my entire life haunted by those memories. I get visions of these monsters — these demons — they come to me in my mind’s eye. Then I hunt down these demons and kill them, telling myself that in the process what I do helps avenge a small part of my mother’s death. So when I tell you I’ve got this, I have got this. This is what I do. It’s what I’ve trained for my whole life. The visions led me to this place and the horror that lurks within.”
I cleared my throat and smoothed down my coat. “Yes, well, I have read the prophecies written in arcane tomes from centuries long past,” I said, “and I can assure you they made no mention of anyone named Darcy.”
“‘The visions led me to this place’” Harlan repeated in a voice meant to mock the hint of the girl’s west coast accent. “Led you to what exactly? This clock, so you could beat it up? Good job. What’s next, oh Selected One? Is there a television set somewhere waiting for you to take your wrath out on, too?”
“No, dummy,” sh
e said, pushing us both aside as she stepped towards the clock itself. I stepped back as the girl reached for its grotesquely decorated cabinet.
Her eyes widened as she truly saw its perverse carving for the first time. She shuddered, then reached behind the clock itself, the muscles in her arms straining as she attempted to topple it.
I reached out to stop her, but it was too late.
Darcy sidestepped the monstrous clock as it tumbled forward. The thundering crash of its upending echoed over and over down the main hallway of the mansion. When the sound died down moments later, Harlan looked first to me, then to the section of wall where the clock had stood.
A roughly carved out hole in the wall gaped back, one I could fit through if I scrunched myself up slightly.
Harlan reached his shotgun towards it and tapped its barrel on the side of the opening. “How did you know this was there?” he asked.
“I’m the Selected,” Darcy said with pride, tapping the side of her head. “Visions, remember? Also, I’m a professional.”
Harlan laughed at that. “Are you even old enough to have working papers?”
Darcy turned to me, shaking her head. “So don’t have the time to answer stupid questions,” she said. With a twirl, she crouched down and stepped through the darkness into the hole. “Coming with?”
First Harlan, now this Selected girl … the gentlemanly part of me wanted to send the two of them packing. The gruesome realist in me, however, realized the odds of my survival were greatly increased with such companion fodder for whatever lurked beneath the old cultist’s mansion. I held my tongue, gestured for Harlan to go through the hole next, then followed after.
Haphazard and slippery steps of stone led down into the moldy depths of the earth beneath the mansion. By my calculations, we were well below any existing basement level and descending even further. The stench of mold and fungi became thicker. Only by breathing through my mouth could I suppress the urge to gag. Judging from the sound of her breath hitching, Darcy was having less luck than I at controlling her reflex to vomit as we descended further and further. She prevailed, however, and after what felt like an hour, the carved passageway leveled out and opened up into a great subterranean room.
Where I expected there to be nothing but an earthy cavern, there was instead a fully furnished study built into the contours of the vast open space. Stalactites hung from the darkness high overhead, but the walls were those of an out-of-place but otherwise regal looking library that perfectly suited the mansion above us. Rows of bookshelves wrapped around the outer walls, a massive desk covered with open tomes sat to my right. Scrolls and charts with symbols vaguely familiar to me lined areas where the natural rock of the cavern poked through. Several unlit torches stuck out along the wall to my left and I moved to light them, pausing only when I noticed — just barely, thank God — a large open fissure cut like an open wound across the middle of the cavern’s floor. Quickly, I backed away from it towards the desk instead, where several open books lay, brittle with age.
Harlan hadn’t noticed my stumble. I glanced over to see if Darcy had witnessed my folly, but she was off investigating the rows and rows of books along the wall, looking as bored as a teenager in a library could be. Oh, the urge to shake the young girl. Back at Messianic, my fellow occult scholars would be more than pleased with this archival discovery.
The others in our Society would marvel over these occult tomes for months, no doubt unlocking the mysteries of Raspail and his mad followers. My own place in our academic ranks would rise … oh, the luck of such a find!
Darcy, on the other hand, pulled one of the books from the shelf, scrunched up her face as she read the cover, and as quick as she could, shoved it back.
“Yawnsville,” she said.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” I said with a fury. “Is this arcane assortment of tomes and grimoires not exciting enough for you?”
She met my anger with hers by crossing her arms and leaning back on one of the bookcases. “Can I kick or punch them?” she asked. “No? Then I have no interest in them. I’m actually more fascinated by that giant hole in the floor you almost fell in a minute ago.”
My anger died on my lips and I gave a short cough into my hand before adjusting my bow tie. “Saw that, did you?”
Darcy nodded, looking quite pleased with herself.
I opened my mouth to reply, but Harlan cut me off.
“When you two ladies are done bickering, we’ve got bigger problems than your little book club discussion,” he said. His gun was raised and pointed off to the far end of the vast room.
Darcy and I both turned. My eyes searched among the shadows that our faint flashlights could barely penetrate that far away across the cavern.
“I see nothing,” I said.
Harlan sighed. “Then look harder, professor,” he insisted.
“There!” Darcy said, pointing at a particular spot. I followed her finger across the room, and then I saw it.
Or rather, him.
A young dark-skinned boy with no hair — possibly of Indian descent — sat cross-legged at the far end of the fissure. His eyes were closed as if he was meditating. The scene would have looked almost peaceful if he was not sitting among what looked to be a pile of blood soaked rags on a section of floor that was stained a dark crimson-brown. Compare his age to Darcy? Older, younger, same age?
Harlan pumped the twin barrels of the shotgun, the metallic shunk-shink echoing out into the space around us.
“Wait,” Darcy said. “Hold up. We’re going to kill a kid?”
Harlan nodded, shotgun slung low at his hip as he started towards the far end of the room. “I’ve done worse,” he said.
“Good lord,” I said, my heart twinging at the thought. “What’s worse than that?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said with a dismissive shrug.
Without another word I set off across the room, running past Harlan as I gave the fissure a wide berth, circling around to the boy.
The child made no effort to move as we closed in on him. In fact, so deep was his meditation that he gave no indication he was aware of our presence.
I reached out to wake him from whatever form of trance he was in, but Harlan clamped his hand down hard on my wrist, causing me to wince.
“Embry!” I hissed, pulling free from him, rubbing my wrist.
“Keep your ass on the ground, cue ball,” Harlan said to the boy as he closed within a foot of him. “Hands at your side.”
Despite having a gun pointed at him, the boy’s face remained calm as his eyes opened, a peaceful smile forming on his lips. It might have seemed pleasant under other circumstances.
I tightened the grip on my blade.
“Why so smiley, sunshine?” Darcy asked, her spear-staff pointed at the boy. She lowered its tip to hook a bit of torn cloth nearby and lifted up what appeared to be the remains of a robe. “Is this your handiwork?”
The smile remained on the boy’s face. He shook his head slow from side to side.
I grabbed Darcy’s staff and pointed it away from him. “You’re joking, right?” I asked. “Pointing this at him? He’s just a boy!”
“Demons take many forms,” she said with a bit of tutorial condescension to it. “That’s how they get ya. All normal looking one second, all soul swallowing the next.”
“For Christ’s sake, Starkwood,” Harlan said, keeping the gun raised to his shoulder. “Doesn’t it seem highly unnatural to find a boy sitting in complete darkness in a nefarious cultist’s cavern that was sealed over by that hideous clock upstairs? This little motherfucker here is as unnatural as they come. Look at the blood!”
I shook my head. “Even if this boy had been responsible for this — which I assure you he is not — look at all these bits of robe. They’re the kind worn by those who worshipped the mad master of this estate, Howard Raspail. These stains are old, those cultists long decades dead. And if this mystery child had indeed been the one who struck down these cultists? Th
at would make him one of the good guys.”
“Correct,” the boy said, startling me as he spoke up, his voice quiet and calm as he remained seated at the edge of the fissure. “As the older gentleman said, I did not harm these men.”
Harlan, unconvinced, kept his gun raised.
After a long moment of hesitation, Darcy’s face softened and she lowered her spear-staff to kneel next to the boy. “If you didn’t do this, then who did?” she asked with compassion thick in her voice.
“I do not know,” he said.
“Then why are you here?” I asked.
“The Divine brought me here,” the boy said with that same simple smile of his.
“Aw, hell no!” Harlan said, finally lowering his gun, pacing back and forth like a panther in a cage before leaning down and jabbing a finger at the boy’s chest. “Listen, kid. I’ll tell you what I told old Mister Bow Tie here earlier. This is my kill. I’m the one picked for this mission, got it?”
“Um, hello … what about my visions?” Darcy asked with a glare. “I’m the Selected One, remember? One. As in singular. Whatever powers that be didn’t mention jack squat about any of you guys either, you know.”
“Forgive me, but this is my area of expertise,” I said, interjecting. “You are all rank amateurs as far as I’m concerned, and are as likely to be in the way as much as you are likely to be killed.”
“Wrong, professor,” Harlan said, tapping his shotgun on his shoulder. “I don’t get killed. I do the killing.”
I held up a hand as I shook my head. “Listen, this doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Four of us here, I mean. I could understand if three of us were drawn here … trichotomies are a powerful thing, in religion, numerology as well as philosophically. The Holy Trinity in Christianity, the three Patriarchs of Judaism, the Triple Bodhi in Buddhism, the Three Treasures in Taoism, the Wiccan Rule of Three … but four of us? There is little arcane reasoning to it.”
Darcy stood and looked to Harlan, who had not moved from his position next to the boy. “Lower your shotgun before I lower it for you. Professor Starkwood is right. He’s just a kid.”
